ACTION

Please take Action
to stop the Quakers from Exploiting
our Sacred Inipi Ceremony!

The following article was taken, with permission, from the Three Fires Cyber Warriors Summer Newsletter:

From 1989 through 2003, a sweat lodge was an annual event at the Friends General Conference Summer Gathering in Amherst Massachusetts. In 2004, a Native people's protest headed by Mashpee Wampanoag elder, Alice Lopez, forced the Quakers to confront their ignorance and racism on this cultural issue. The cultural activists were successful in persuading the Quakers to cancel their 2004 sweat lodge out of a desire not to further outrage and disrespect those who wrote impassioned letters demanding a cessation of all sweat lodge activities. However, the sweat lodge was immensely popular with the young and Chuck Fager has resumed his campaign based on nothing but specious rhetoric to bring back the offensive sweats irregardless of the objections of the area's legitimate hereditary spiritual leaders.

HISTORY: In 2004, Alice Lopez's letter (http://www.quakersweat.org/wampanoag.html)sparked controversy among the Quakers. As of today, the Quakers continue to debate the issue without coming to any agreement as to whether the practice should be resumed or permanently discontinued. The Quakers are getting bogged down in all the typical arguments that frauds make and are allowing themselves to ignore the real issues - respect for the integrity of our religious practices.
You can leave a comment on their website (http://journal.earthwitness.org/the-quaker-magpie-journal/2007/2/1/fgcs-sweat-lodge-an-effort-at-discernment.html)

OR
you can email Marshall Massey, a Conservative Friend (Quaker) in Omaha, NE. using this form: (http://journal.earthwitness.org/e-mail-me).

OR
If you want to influence the people who can forbid Quaker Sweat Lodges permanently, you can send the Friends General Conference an e-mail at: [email protected].

You can influence their decision by posting your respectful, well thought out arguments for preserving the integrity of Native American spirituality to:

Please take some time to support the few Quakers of Conscience and urge the QFG to stop stalling and splitting hairs and do the decent thing NOW! Cancel the Sweat Lodge permanently.

Here is my comment:

I can�t believe I�m hearing these lame excuses for exploitation of First Nations ppl from Quakers! The Inipi ceremony is and was and always will be the sole cultural property of the Lakota. Arvol Looking Horse, the legitimate spiritual leader of the Lakota, has closed this ceremony to outsiders. So, case closed. It is disrespectful for whitemen to ignore his decision. From an Indigenous perspective, there is nothing more to discuss.

You are clearly too ignorant about Native people to have an intelligent, respectful discussion with us about your exploitation of the thing that is most intimate to us. I�m not going to tell you that you are racist. You are. You are clearly in too much denial to deal with this. I will tell you that you are guilty of spiritual rape. You are spiritual rapists. Every single one of you that did not speak up and stop this prostitution of our sacred ceremony is a spiritual rapist.

While, there is no one Native American religion. There is ONE thing we all have in common: disenfranchisement; a sense of hopelessness, and righteous indignation at colonial occupation and rape of our homelands by YOUR greedy ancestors! The one thing that gets us through each day of dealing with the crap YOUR ANCESTORS created for us is our spirituality. It is a very intimate thing that belongs ONLY o people with BOTH genetic and cultural ties to legitimate, living Native Communities. In terms that you Capitalists can understand, it is the sole cultural property of the Lakota. That means the Lakota get to decide who can perform their ceremonies. From this discussion, you would think that every Native person had died and the grave robbers were arguing as to how to divide up the spoils.

What kind of monster would think he had a right to defile and pervert that?

Quakers, Wipe your consciences! STOP IT! STOP IT NOW! STOP ARGUING ABOUT IT AND MAKE AMENDS FOR YOUR OFFENSE! EDUCATE YOUR YOUTH ABOUT THE CRIMES OF THEIR ANCESTORS! EDUCATE! Don�t APPROPRITATE!


Jim the Angry Militant NDN