In October 2009 the self-help author James Arthur Ray ran a five-day event near Sedona, Arizona, called Spiritual Warrior, at a price of roughly nine thousand dollars a place. The closing exercise was held in a covered structure built by Ray's staff, into which more than fifty participants were put for a session lasting about two hours in rounds, following several days that had included fasting and a period alone in the desert.
Kirby Brown, 38, and James Shore, 40, died that day. Liz Neuman, 49, died after more than a week in a coma. Eighteen other people were taken to hospital. Testimony at trial described participants vomiting, losing consciousness and being dragged out while the session continued, and described Ray discouraging people from leaving.
He was acquitted of manslaughter and convicted in June 2011 on three counts of negligent homicide. He was sentenced to two years on each count, to be served concurrently, and was released after twenty months.
The reason to record this in an encyclopedia entry is not the crime. It is what the event was not. Nothing about it resembled the ceremony whose name it borrowed. The traditions that hold the inipi and its relatives put the entire weight of the thing on the qualification of the person leading it, on protocols governing the door and anyone who needs to go out, on the preparation of the fire and the stones, and on a relationship between leader and participants that is not a commercial one. Ray had none of that and was not claiming to. He had bought a shape.
Native commentators said so at the time, and several noted a second thing: that much of the coverage treated the deaths as an indictment of sweat lodges rather than of a man selling a ceremony that had never been given to him. Both errors are available and they point in opposite directions. A ceremony conducted by the people who hold it is not what killed anyone in Arizona, and the fact that a ceremony can be imitated badly is not an argument for publishing it so that imitators can do it properly.
Sources State of Arizona v. James Arthur Ray (Yavapai County Superior Court)Yavapai County Superior Court (Judge Warren R. Darrow presiding) with Hand et al. v. Ray et al. (United States District Court, District of Arizona)United States District Court, District of Arizona (Prescott Division), Arvol Looking Horse: Public Statement on the Sedona Sweat Lodge DeathsArvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle