Batshit Crazy Sweat Lodge Killer Released On Bail

What we would not give to see Tamarack Song in an orange jump suit just like this sweat-lodge stealing, manslaughtering nutter!

[To see why, please read our previous post Masturbating in the Sauna: Tamarack's Non-Indian Sweat Lodge.]



After his arrest, James Arthur Ray's bail was set at $5 million dollars, but his lawyers eventually got it reduced to about half a million. While whites continue to steal sacred ceremony from indigenous people, we are betting that these deaths, and James Ray's incarceration, have given many would-be thieves considerable pause - a very welcome development.


James Arthur Ray looks at people in the gallery during the second day of his bond hearing in Prescott, Ariz. on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010. Ray is facing three manslaughter counts for deaths that occurred during one of his retreats near Sedona, Ariz in October 2009. (AP Photo/Pool, Jack Kurtz)

Guru in Ariz. sweat lodge deaths released on bond

(AP) – Feb 26, 2010

CAMP VERDE, Ariz. — A motivational speaker charged with manslaughter in the deaths of three people at an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony is out of jail.

Yavapai County Jail Sgt. Dee Huntley says James Arthur Ray gained his freedom Friday, one day after a Yavapai County Superior Court judge reduced him bond from $5 million to $525,000.

Ray had to surrender his passport. He also cannot organize, supervise or conduct any activities that might harm others.

Ray has pleaded not guilty to three counts of manslaughter stemming from an October sweat lodge ceremony that was supposed to be the highlight of a five-day "Spiritual Warrior" retreat.

Prosecutors allege Ray recklessly crammed more than 50 people inside the sweat lodge, a small heated enclosure used in traditional American Indian ceremonies.

Recognizing Nuage Tricksters

Nuage Tricksters

"Needing to be an expert on everything is part of your indoctrination into Colonialism and White supremacy."

"Tricksters are good at shape shifting into a form that is familiar to his victims. What is more familiar to your corrupt society than the missionary?"

THE TRICKSTER

A trickster is a supernatural being and a hero who, through his cunning, often brings some form of good to his people; sometimes the trickster is a creator god. At the same time, he often appears as though he cannot tell the difference between good and evil. The trickster stands for the forces of mischief and destruction, but he can also represent less harmful horseplay, crafty trickery, or even bungling behaviour. In his more sinister form, he enjoys bringing chaos and disorder to the world. Tricksters in Native American myth include Great Hare or Rabbit, Raccoon, or other animals among the Woodland peoples of the Northeast and Southeast; coyote in the Southwest, West and Plains; and the raven, blue jay, or mink among the Northwest Coast peoples.

The trickster in our modern world most commonly takes the shape of the nuage religious fraud. Nuage tricksters can shape shift into some very appealing forms. They don’t seem bad. They don’t look bad. But they are all about destruction. They’re interested in exploiting people for power money and even sex.

In most indigenous traditions, the trickster reveals his tricks in the end of the story and a moral lesson is learned. This is not the case for the nuage trickster. They will do everything in their power to keep from revealing their tricks. They don't trick to teach a lesson. The nuage trickster tricks because he is all about power and control. It is precisely because he never reveals his trickery, that the nuage trickster is a hard one to walk away from.

How to Recognize Nuage Tricksters: How to Make Them Reveal Their Tricks

This is written for all those non-NDN sincere seekers who think that they can find anything spiritual on the internet.

The best way to find a fraud online is simply to type “sweat lodge”, “vision quest” or “shaman” into the Google search engine. Without fail, every hit that comes up is put up by an individual who is engaged in some type of fraudulent activity. Every single one is the leftist equivalent of Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts or any other tele-evangelist currently under investigation. There isn’t any significance difference. You are a fool if you think there is.

Legitimate Native American spiritual leaders DO NOT advertise on the internet. They DO NOT charge for ceremonies, and they are not at all interested in spreading the word or increasing the flock. Stop and think about it for a minute, this is a profoundly EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN activity. If you are truly seeking an ALTERNATIVE to Christianity, then why accept it in the exact same FORM as Christianity – proselytizing evangelizing and spreading the word through books? If you really desire an alternative, they why do you insist that everything be given to you in the same FORM as the religion that didn’t meet your spiritual needs in the first place? It is an unfortunate fact of human nature that most people are quickest to trust "one of their own." Consequently, there are thousands of “White shamans” out there who cunningly project a stereotypical image that is comforting to white seekers. All these nuage tricksters do is to reinforce racist stereotypes about native people – that we are all deeply spiritual and only interested in “sharing” ceremonies with whites that will undo the environmental destruction they have done to the planet in order to maintain their privileged lifestyles. We are NOT your spiritual servants. We DO NOT exist to meet your spiritual needs. We don’t talk about our spirituality anymore than we discuss our private sex lives. Our spirituality is a private matter. It’s a cultural thing.

For those of you determined to find that one legitimate teacher out there who can see how sincere you are in your spiritual quest. Get over yourself. To the indigenous mind, this is extreme selfishness and an evil state of being. Such selfishness is considered the main barrier to a true spiritual journey among legitimate indigenous spiritual leaders. You need to come to grips with the fact that you probably weren’t meant to be a spiritual leader in a culture that you weren’t raised in and that you know absolutely nothing about. Needing to be an expert on everything is part of your indoctrination into Colonialism and White supremacy. Nuage tricksters depend on this selfishness. Reading all those books about do-it-yourself ceremonies is like watching FOX news; the more you watch the less you actually know about the issues and the more vulnerable you are to those who want to trick you. (Google it, they’ve done actual studies on this) Trickster will always try to make you think you are the exception to the rule and that there is one legitimate teacher out there if you can only find that teacher by virtue of your exceptional sincerity. This is considered selfishness and a big vice in the indigenous worldviews.

Trickster will always try to trap you with the false promise of quick fixes and easy feel-good answers. Legitimate Native spiritual leaders are 100% committed to meeting the needs of their legitimate indigenous communities. Why would they abandon their own communities to meet the needs of the colonizers who are still bent on the total destruction of their way of life? Why would they choose their oppressors needs over the needs of their own people? They don’t have time to waste on outsiders who don’t know who they are. They don’t have energy to waste on outsiders who are so frightened and confused about their identities as white people that they are desperate to find a crutch – a false belief system that will ease their guilt if only for a little while. Without exception, there are NO LEGITIMATE SPIRITUAL LEADERS of any indigenous nation selling or advertising ceremony, sacred herbs or sacred artifacts to outsiders. This is what religious frauds do. Legitimate spiritual elders DO NOT go on world tours, offer workshops, issue certificates, or form non-profits to proselytize or engage in anything as ridiculous as “Shamanic counseling.” Tricksters are good at shape shifting into a form that is familiar to his victims. What is more familiar to your corrupt society than the missionary?

If you have already been tricked by these people in the past, then YOU have a lot to account for. You have a lot of self-reflection to do. You have a lot of work to do on yourself, before you will ever be ready to deal with things that are truly spiritual. You need to confront your colonial indoctrination, your whiteness, your skin privilege, and your sense of entitlement. You need to discover what is lacking in you that you can be tricked. There is a list of websites and videos that can help you, but it will not be fun and you will not be made to feel wonderful and special. That’s what religious hucksters do. If you are truly ready to begin any sort of spiritual journey, you must be ready to confront your shadow. You must be committed to deal with the revelation that your “born-again” neopagan experiences with some nuage trickster was more about your denial, your need to escape your white identity, your weariness with a alienating Capitalist society, your longing for community and your emotional vulnerability than with anything truly spiritual or indigenous. Your foolishness, your irrationality and your gullibility is your shadow. The trickster is always looking for ways he can benefit by manipulating that shadow. The trickster preys on guilty confused people who don’t know who they really are, but he is powerless against people who have to courage to acknowledge and confront their shadows. When you know your shadow, (your Colonialism) you can’t be tricked.

If you still continue to support and defend these religious hucksters then you are complicit in the spiritual genocide of the indigenous nations on this planet. You cannot escape the responsibility of this or the guilt of this. You can only find a more clever and more manipulative spiritual huckster to delay this painful self discovery. Spiritual growth isn’t about rainbows and crystals; it is about being painfully and intensely honest with yourself. It’s about knowing who you really are – not false piety, not an inflated ego or a need to go around telling people you’re a shaman or that you’ve studied with a shaman. This is disgraceful selfishness to the indigenous mine. This is a foreign state of being to a white person, but it doesn’t cost a penny and you don’t need a guru to get to a new level of honesty. All you need is a commitment to STOP lying to yourself. STOP the denial. Stop the flight into fantasy and live in the moment in the real world. We’ve met dam few non-NDNS who are willing to get that honest.

ADDENDUM:
Legitimate Spiritual Leaders speak their language, and perform their ceremonies in their language. They teach in their language, pray in their language, and sing in their language. They speak the language of the indigenous community that they serve, and they do not perform their ceremonies in the language of the colonizer, whether it be English, Spanish, or French. The only time they use English is to interpret for members of their community who no longer speak their original language.

Mohawk Nation News: “NEW AGE” PSYCHOBABBLE BEING SWALLOWED BY A FEW

Though not mentioned specifically in this article, Tamarack and the Teaching Drum are very much a part of the racist New Age movement being called out by Mohawk Nation News.

Caveat emptor. Tamarack runs nothing but a glorified reading circle with himself and his fakelore tomes at the center. Now ask yourselves: Do you really want to spend $8000 to join an outdoor reading circle for a year?

From: Mohawk Nation News

“NEW AGE” PSYCHOBABBLE BEING SWALLOWED BY A FEW

MNN. May 3, 2009. A near death experience can cause tremendous fear and trauma and could overrule a person’s will. Such pressure is part of a colonial strategy to break us down. Most resist. A few give in.

The NAFTA Super Highway from Mexico is coming through the Mohawk community of Akwesasne. In June 2009 non-native guards, who have shown hatred for Mohawks, are being handed guns to intimidate and try to exercise absolute power over us in the middle of our community. RCMP, OPP, military and para military agencies are building huge facilities nearby. Cornwall Ontario will be a center for police activity. Nullifying resistance by Mohawks has been a longtime target.

Over the last couple of decades a new age ideology has beset Onowaregeh, Great Turtle Island. This new age movement is a tool to bring in one world religion for expediency’s sake. It’s a mishmash of Hinduism, Buddhism, Ghandi, Kabbalah, Scientology, crystals, reincarnation, Raelians, channeling, fortune tellers, seers and whatever else can be thrown into the pot. It’s sprinkled with Indigenous philosophy to give it credibility. This new age religion with feathers, beads and buckskins is being made palpable to Indigenous and others.

This false ideology is geared to direct the masses into the new age of one world government, one religion and one economic system to be run by war lords and their criminal handlers. People have to be indoctrinated to become obedient and to subdue their reasoning faculties.

The Kaianerehkowa, the Great Law of the Indigenous people is opposite to the new age doctrine. Our philosophy is based on a powerful relationship with the natural world. It strengthens our will, which is the watch dog of humanity. Nothing is supposed to enter that can harm, mislead or control us. This is the basis of democracy and can head off fascism. True democracy is equality and everyone has a voice.

To disarm the will, drugs, alcohol, hypnosis, incantations, spells, rituals, seances and trances help nullify the ability to say “no”. Eventually we can lose charge over our “doorkeeper”, our will, so that another mental process can be inserted inside us. It tells us, “I am your friend, your spirit guide, your master. Follow me and I can make you immortal”. It is disempowering. An undercurrent is the message, “I am strong and I can kill you”.

U.S. President Thomas Jefferson got the Quakers to help Handsome Lake whose will was overrun by alcoholism and visions. He started a revitalization movement based on these principles to mess up the Rotino’shonni: onwe, Iroquois.

Indigenous history and traditions have been cleverly mixed with new age concepts. We are told that other people inhabited Great Turtle Island before us, that some of us are extra terrestrials, that everybody should be vegetarians, that one world government is necessary and that, if we want peace, we shouldn’t be critical.

The Raelians say that our human creators from space brought love and peace through a combination of spirituality, sensuality and science. Scientists from another planet created all life on earth using DNA!! The extra-terrestrials will come back to check on us.

We are being told to forgive no matter how bad it is. They don’t suggest change. The victims become confused and weak so that all political, economic, social and military levers of power controlling society can be overtaken.

During the time of the drug culture, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau brought in new agers to run Indian Affairs in Canada. He had visited eastern mystics for enlightenment. Indigenous organizations were infiltrated. Healers and Elders were trained and sent among us and even among the non-native youth. It died out for a while.

After the 1990 Mohawk Oka crisis Indian Affairs set up the Kumik Lodge to train and certify a new slew of healers. It taught Pan-Indian cleansing, healing circles, sweat lodges and confessions. They went into our communities and jails to learn more about us.

Today new age covens are being formed in some of our communities. Ceremonies and meetings are frequently held. CDs on universal teachings are watched, studied and distributed. Some followers say they can’t move products or travel unless the stars are in the right place. The adherents call themselves “universal” persons, humans of another time or reality. Some have given up all their documents like driver’s licenses, birth certificates, Indian cards, medical cards, membership in their community, nation and confederacy. Psyches are being diverted. Their will has been weakened. We don’t know if they are giving up their properties or bank accounts.

Background: The new age movement ensnares susceptible people that are attracted by false spirituality, becoming “ascended masters” and speaking with “spirit guides”. Critic, Lee Penn, says: “New age is a pot pourri of beliefs and practices that fall outside of all faiths”. [www.leepenn. org/LP-NewAgeInd ex]

According to astrology, crystals, weird workshops and psycho babble, the earth will be cleansed of those who refuse to evolve. Traditional morality and families will disappear.

See list of big shots in the movement. At Maurice Strong’s Manitou retreat in Colorado, treatment includes everything being taken away from the follower to suck out the core of their being. Under the guise of meditation and sensory deprivation, they are confined into a small space to strip their identity. A low protein diet is part of this.

Barbara Hubbard says: “Your highest spiritual beings are telling you to access to an inner teacher… that through “initiation” you can transform yourself into an “ascended master”. Once our bodies, minds and souls are drained dry by free sex and trafficking with the spirit world, we ought to chose to die. In fact, it seems unethical and foolish to live on”.

These new age charismatic movements can affect participants in adverse ways. Intensely held religious or quasi-religious beliefs and ideology are imposed on members. They are promised emotional well-being and a sense of direction. They can’t make a free choice to leave the group. They are pressured to recruit new members, break with families and friends and to socialize mainly with the group.

On March 28, 1997, in Rancho Santa Fe, California, thirty-nine young men and women of Heaven’s Gate killed themselves. They believed that their human bodies were physical containers that had to be discarded so that their souls could be transported to a new level of being. Their souls were to meet up with a UFO that was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet passing Earth at that time. In their new plane of existence, they would inhabit new bodies and travel through different galaxies. The charismatic leader was an ex-minister who called himself Bo after Bo-peep who shepherded sheep. He was seen as an omnipotent godlike authority that diminished their anxiety, depression and alienation. Members were recruited personally or through the internet.

The Kaianerehkowa goes back to the beginning of time when we started thinking. We have our own stories about our origins here on Onowaregeh. We should remain with our own principles. This new age has nothing to do with us. We sent away our younger brothers because of their insane behavior and they came back worse than before. Some of us may drift away for a time from what a true human being is. For most of us, our will is our plan for survival. Everything goes back to our connection with the natural world.

Kahentinetha & Karakwine, MNN Mohawk Nation News, www.mohawknationnew s.com kahentinetha2@ yahoo.com Note: Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send donations by check or money order to “MNN Mohawk Nation News”, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN “BORDER” category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepres s.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews. com/news/ subscription. php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitio ns.com/petition/ Iroquois

Biggies in the new age movement: www.leepenn. org/LP-NewAgeInd ex: Robert Muller, former Secretary General of the UN; James Parks Morton, Dean of Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine NYC; Episcopal Bishop of San Francisco; William Swing, Rudolph Steiner Foundation, World Goodwill; Lawrence S. Rockfeller, whose fund has financed new agers; Mathew Fox, Barbara Marx Hubbard; power brokers ArcherDanielsMidlan d; CNN; Hewlett Packard; Occidental Petroleum; Carnegie Corp.; Kellogg Foundation; Rockfeller Brothers Fund; Georges Berthain, president the Tri Lateral Commission; Desmond Tutu; Gorbachev, Ted Turner; Fredrico Mayer of UNESCO; Maurice Strong and his Manitou Foundation in Colorado, and many other biggies.

Manitou Foundation spirit@manitou. org owned and run by Maurice Strong and his wife, Hanne. http://www.manitou.org/
Raelian Movement www.rael.org

A Victory In The Struggle Against Cultural Imperialism

After a thorough search of both the main Teaching Drum web page and Tamarack Song's own personal page, we have noticed the disappearance of the wretchedly fake sweat lodge article Tamarack wrote called "Gifting Path," which was lambasted in our post "Masturbating In The Sauna: Tamarack's Non-Indian Sweat Lodge."

Apparently, Tamarack has buried the beast, as its rotten, racist smell (and our criticism) had become too much for even him to bear. We have no idea if it remains a part of the Wilderness Guide Program materials, but if so, the article is not advertised in the contents list.

Maybe, too, the fact that Dan Konen has at last discovered and acknowledged his ancestors has left him less inclined to co-opt (steal) from Indigenous cultures (a process we recommend for all non-Natives). Oh, he's still pimping some hokey version of "native" on the Teaching Drum's website, but hopefully with a few more years of our relentless, withering critiques, he finally will dump even that culturally imperialist abomination.

Thanks to Dan Konen's own words, we have learned that his father's lies about his family's true origins encouraged Tamarack to become a self-hating Jew. This, we believe, is the personal root of Tamarack's racist pathology in relation to American Indians - he was ashamed of his own heritage so he created a New Age Indian-wannabe persona with which to bury it. This is likely also a key motivation in his choice to change his name to Tamarack Song.

Ancestors

"When as a child I asked my father what he knew, he would proudly--and defensively--state that we were German. I sensed that he was hiding something that he himself may not have completely understood. 'Why was most of his side of the family dark-skinned?' I would ask myself. 'And why did kids at school ask if I was Jewish?'

My mother’s ancestry was shrouded by another veil: the shame of illegitimacy. No one seemed to know--or at least was willing to tell--where her mother came from. Her birth certificate was fabricated to look as though she was the product of a normal Christian marriage.
...

The ancient tribes of North Africa's Nile Delta are my father's people. Originally pastoralists, they migrated to the fertile lands of the eastern Mediterranean, where they gave up their nomadic ways to become the first agriculturalists. Perhaps my father would have been proud of his ancestry had he known he was a member of the kohan, the Hebrew hereditary priestly caste. If genealogical and Biblical records are correct, my father is a direct male descendant of Aaron, elder brother of Moses and the first Kohan Gadol, or High Priest."

Sadly, Daniel still cannot seem to get history right. The ancient Hebrews were hardly the first agriculturalists, as agriculture has been practiced around the world for over ten thousand years, and possibly much longer.

And why would a hunter-gatherer wannabe be proud his father's people were "the first agriculturalists"? Desperate still for some relevance, however far-fetched? You betcha.

Still, we celebrate a victory today. That horrible, fakelore sweat lodge article is no longer available for purchase.

Dan Konen's struggle to speak his own truth reveals even more deeply the genocidal nature of a racist America that wants non-Natives to deny their ancestors and become white, all the while stealing and perverting real Native American culture so that this land's Indigenous peoples will be less Indian.

Don't buy it, Folks. Find your own ancestors. It's a key step in destroying whiteness.

Tamarack Song Pimps The Teaching Drum to MTV

Live from the Northwoods of Wisconsin -- it's Cheesehead Survivor!

Just when you thought he could not get any more desperate for attention, new age fraud Tamarack Song takes his phoney, playing-Indian program to a whole new, vapid level.

MTV?

My, my, my. So primitive! But Dan Konen would be the first to condemn REAL Natives who dared stray from the hunter-gatherer, buckskin party line.

We doubt this brief media exposure will help the Teaching Drum's Wilderness Guide Program much, considering how seriously in the toilet is the white settler economy these days. Not a lot of people are going to have the extra income for these kinds of self-indulgent, masturbutory experiences in the future.

[Cap doff to the contributor who sent us the email]:

Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 9:21 PM
To: Tamarack@teachingdrum.org
Subject: two stars are born

Greetings friends,

A lot is happening in my life and here at the Teaching Drum, and the first thing I'd like to share with you is that on Sunday, October 5 at 7 pm ET/PT (6pm CT, 5pm MT) the Wilderness Guide Program is being featured on the season premiere of MTV's True Life. The show focuses on Derik and Ginny, two current participants in the Program. Move over Survivor!

In the near future Canadian Public Television will be airing its own special on the Wilderness Guide Program, and there is much else taking shape that I'll fill you in on later. In the meantime, if you have something you'd like to let me in on, I'd be glad to hear from you.

In Balance,
Tamarack

UPDATE OCTOBER 6, 2008: Here's a link that has the Teaching Drum video from MTV. We'll do a review in another post soon.

Guru Definition

"Guru (n): Someone who uses what they know to convince others that they don’t know anything..."

From New Age Anonymous