Just because a person knows their stuff and they know it well, does not mean they are a GOD or an authority figure that knows everything. This man may KNOW a ton. Granted he is very well known around the world. But here in lies the questions that we deal here with……. Is he Native American Indian? Has he gone through a million sweats or a couple of sweats? And who was putting them on when he was going through them. The main other question is this: Has he ever been through 4 years of Sun Dance or is he going through Sun Dance now? I can tell you what I know here and this is only what I myself know from real life and hard core experience.
It took the Lakhota 10 years of preparing me to get me into my first sweat lodge. I was a Canupa/Sacred Pipe carrier first. Then it took 5 years of sweat lodges before even attempting to allow me to vision quest/hunblechia or to Sun Dance. Once I made it through my second year of Sun Dance, only then and ONLY THEN did they themselves come out and build a sweat lodge and make me the keeper of the sweat and gave me the permission and the right to run and pour a sweat lodge. Only after 15 years of hard work and being their gofer and their little sitting and stepping stool was I allowed to run a sweat.
This spring I have Sal from New Jersey coming up to help me build a new sweat. I have full rights and permissions to run them. This man did not. If someone has a problem inside the sweat, they MUST exit the sweat. Not die inside of it. Our sweats are VERY controlled. And another question I have for this man that knows everything. How many hot rocks was the sweat he ran? Did he pack it in to show off to everyone that he could handle the heat? Or did he do it the proper way and add in the amount of rocks he was suppose to? You can’t just place 20 hot rocks inside a sweat. Especially when you only are suppose to place a certain amount in the sweat. Those that you place in there if cooked properly will last the entire length of the sweat o matter how few you put in there. Our minimum sweat runs with 7 hot rocks that have been cooked over a Sacred fire for 4-6 hours. When the rocks come inside the dark sweat lodge, you can see them glowing. If not cooked long enough then you have to have a ton of rocks to make up for it all.
More over, when inside a sweat, there are four rounds. Each round consists of 2-4 prayers. Not more and not less. So if his sweat was running for a two hour period, he was just showing off to everyone that he could handle it. That’s not right at all. Like I said, this is the reason most Native full bloods don’t allow whites into much of anything anymore. The whites take a weekend workshop and go home thinking they can run one too. I don’t care how many nurses were there to perform CPR. AND….those people that paid $9000- a piece for this retreat, I can almost guarantee you they all had their own metaphysical stores and that’s how they could afford to be paying that kind of money for the retreat to begin with. They thought they’d go in, buy their way into the natives world, go back home and call themselves a spiritual warrior because they went through such a hot and long sweat ordeal. HA! They are spiritual warriors now alright. Now they are on the “other side” per se and they are spiritual as they could get.
This is stupidity, ignorance and I can not say enough here about what took place. The exact same thing took place 5 years ago down in PA. Some idiot went on a vision quest for a day and a night and came back and put people out “on the hill” as the Lacota put it. And those people died after paying 10,000 a piece for a vision quest. They were left out there for 4 days and 4 nights with nothing to eat or drink and they not being born and raised into these ways couldn’t handle it or take it. They all died and there were 8 of them I believe.
I have done Sun Dance and Vision Quest. I have been without the food, water or anything else either. But, I was taken care of and they looked after me. They didn’t just leave me out there all alone to myself to die. And I didn’t pay 9-10 grand either. I worked my ass off for 15 years to learn what I know and use it properly. But I don’t use it to kill people. And everything I do, I always get permission from pops and baby reed first. I have a copy of their tribal ID’s just to be on the safe side as well.
Eleni