Книга раскрывает, как индустрия самопомощи в Седоне присваивает сакральные практики коренных народов

A Native American artist and activist based in Santa Fe told me some time ago that despite all that white Americans did to the Indigenous people of North America, and continue doing in some measure, he nevertheless feels sorry for them. He doesn’t forgive them, but he pities them. Unlike Native Americans, he told me, the majority of descendants of European settlers don’t seem to have a spiritual and cultural sense of belonging to land — they rarely know their ancestral lands or ancestral spiritual practices, which can lead to a spiritual void and an identity crisis. It can also lead to the appropriation of cultural or spiritual practices of others, including those of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The oppressor turns to the wisdom of the oppressed. You’ve seen it in Santa Fe and elsewhere: New Age, post-New Age, self-help, the wellness industry. People in search of enlightenment or a cure for their emotional or physical ailments turn to crystals, hallucinogenic drugs, to the opening and cleansing of chakras, to detox therapies such as the Amazonian Kambo ceremony during which dried frog secretions are applied to wounds. That isn’t to say that these aren’t helpful — if performed with cultural permission and correctly and safely, they may help certain people find a path to healing or a new perspective. But what happens when they turn to self-appointed non-Indigenous gurus? “That’s what the self-help industry capitalizes on,” says Annette McGivney, Colorado-based investigative journalist and author of PlasticShaman. “They’re like, ‘Do you feel like you don’t know who you are? Like you don’t have a purpose? You’re not happy? Well, sign up for this seminar. Or get frog venom shot in your arm. It all makes white people very gullible.” McGivney will talk about her book at two events — one in Santa Fe and the other in Albuquerque — with fellow Torrey House Press author, Betsy Gaines Quammen, whose book This Haunted Land came out September 1. McGivney reports on the great outdoors, the environment, cultures of the Southwest, and Native affairs for The Guardian, Outside Magazine, Backpacker Magazine, and Arizona Highways. In Plastic Shaman, she writes of her own experience with the wellness and New Age industry, why and how she was lured into it, and what made her leave many of its aspects behind. “For a long time, I repressed my violent childhood,” she says. “Then I started having flashbacks, and I basically had a mental health crisis. It was extreme. I was having panic attacks. I was a single mom, and I became desperate for help. I grew up in a strict Catholic home, but when I found myself in that very vulnerable place, when I was in that very acute state, unable to sleep, I got pulled into the New Age wellness scene. Even my psychiatrist recommended different New Age type books to me, including A Course in Miracles [by Helen Schucman, 1975].” McGivney’s personal experience is only part of what Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness is about. At its core, as its subtitle notes, the book explores what can happen when people in search of healing or enlightenment put their trust in so-called gurus — or plastic shamans, as Native people call them — who appropriate sacred and spiritual Indigenous practices and even commodify them. In particular, the book focuses on one such plastic shaman, James Arthur Ray, who misappropriated the sweat lodge practices of the Lakota people, lied about having trained with a Lakota medicine man, and sold the sweat lodge ceremony as part of his Spiritual Warrior Retreat at the Angel Valley Retreat Center near Sedona, Arizona, for a hefty sum. In 2009, his sweat-lodge malpractice led to three deaths. McGivney’s book project started as a true crime work; soon, however, it took on a new dimension, and in its published form, reveals plenty about current times in America. And the author is quick to acknowledge that the book wouldn’t have been possible without the counsel and help of the many Native American people she met along the way. “Because I cover Native American issues, I was writing about how the Yavapai-Apache tribe, which are the Indigenous people of the Sedona area, were forced on a long walk in the late 1800s from their homeland to eastern Arizona,” she says. “As I was interviewing the Yavapai cultural people within the tribe, they told me about this man named Lance Morris [Assiniboine], who was married to a tribal member and who was very active in protesting against people like James Arthur Ray and other self-help gurus in Sedona who appropriated Native American culture. And I thought, ‘Oh, oh.’” They told her she should speak to Morris. “He was very tentative at first, but we kept having phone conversations,” she says, “and so he finally shared with me how he had been involved in protesting against James [Arthur] Ray. And he told me about other Native Americans who were also involved, like Sylvia Wilson [Yavapai/member of the Yavapai-Apache Tribe].” McGivney learned of the harm that these unsanctioned and appropriated spiritual practices, in particular by the Sedona tourism industry, can cause. She used the situation in Sedona to exemplify “this larger issue around white people,” she says, “the American exceptionalism that white people hang on to in the United States, and Native Americans struggling to hang on to their culture.”