In 2009, three people died after an hours-long sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona.
It was part of a retreat led by the once-prominent self-help guru, James Arthur Ray. He ultimately served two years in prison for negligent homicide.
Journalist and author Annette McGivney spent years investigating what happened — and the way white Americans have appropriated Indigenous culture in the name of wellness.
She spoke with KNAU’s Bree Burkitt about her new book, “Plastic Shaman.”
BREE BURKITT, KNAU: You started investigating this case back in 2018, and at that point, it's nearly a decade after the sweat lodge deaths and a few years after the trial. What made you want to go back and take another look at this specific case?
ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: I thought, you know, the case was pretty much over, but then Ray got out of prison and went right back into the self-help business. He was teaching seminars again, and I just thought that was so crazy. So I started investigating it in 2018 and got a lot of files from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office and thousands of files and started digging through them.
And in addition to that, I got to know some Native Americans that protested against James Arthur Ray. And so a whole other aspect of the book is my investigation into the appropriation of Native American culture, and not only the harms that causes to indigenous people, but also why are like the white people that were in James Ray's sweat lodge drawn to Native American culture and how the self-help industry exploits that desire to, you know, get closer to Native American culture and have that kind of indigenous authenticity as a path to wellness and what that's all about.
BURKITT: You write about this “cultural iron curtain” between Flagstaff and the neighboring Native American communities and say that the, quote, 'fake Natives in Sedona were more accessible to white people like you.' Are we — as white people here in Northern Arizona — then complicit?
MCGIVNEY: Well, I want to say two things can be true at once. Like yes, we are complicit by kind of wanting to like go around with blinders on about the reality of what Indigenous people have been through and what they're living through now. Like Flagstaff, like many other communities, like we've got this hypocrisy going on.
BURKITT: Your own experiences with trauma and wellness are both parts of this book. Did that help you understand how people got to this point?
MCGIVNEY: In 2009, when it happened, before I had my own, quote, unquote, nervous breakdown in 2010, I, in 2009, I thought, 'Why are those people so stupid? Why didn't they just get out of the sweat lodge?' And by 2010, one year later, I'm over at Bookman's getting all these new age books and, you know, thinking about communicating with my ancestors and animal spirits and all types of stuff.
Because so I became aware of how people like James Arthur Ray are these like malignant narcissist personalities that are often in the wellness industry, and they prey upon people that are kind of in a vulnerable place in their lives.
BURKITT: James Arthur Ray died more than a year ago at this point, and we're nearly two decades out from when this all happened in the first place. Have we as a society actually learned anything from this in this world of Instagram gurus and questionable health advice? Has anything changed?
MCGIVNEY: I wish I could say we've learned things and things have improved, but that is not the case. So it is so weird how self-help gurus are constantly like they're shapeshifters. Like when Ray did his sweat lodge in 2009, there were a lot of people that were blatantly in Sedona saying they were offering Native American sweat lodge ceremonies for money.
But that after his case, appropriating Native American culture in a blatant way became sort of politically incorrect. So we have yet to even come close to addressing the hypocrisy around longing for that indigenous culture while doing nothing to acknowledge what we've done as settlers in a stolen homeland to indigenous people. So I feel like true wellness will only come from addressing that disparity and owning up to what happened in our past.
“Plastic Shaman” is out now.
