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The WILDER WEST...
the ART & WIT & WISDOM of DAVE WILDER
Plastic Indians
Not
everyone in Sedona is part Indian, it just seems that way sometimes.
I've met quite a few folks there who claim to be V4 to V2 some tribe or
another. They are invariably dripping with turquoise and calling
themselves something like "Willow Moon-Feather." They often have a
trust fund. Most of them claim to be healers too, shamanic
practitioners of the highest order. Medicine Men. Or is it more PC to
say Medicine Persons? For the right price, some of them will take you
out to the vortex and tell you anything you want to hear. You can tell
you're close to a vortex in Sedona when you feel the money being sucked
out of your wallet. They also take plastic... Visa, Mastercard and
American Express. They are the Plastic Indians.
I
admit to having no patience for these charlatans. Aside from duping
gullible tourists with spurious claims about medicine wheels, there is
just something unseemly about cherry-picking Native religions to stuff
full the gaping holes in your New Age cosmology. It is at once both
extremely tacky and profoundly disrespectful of the very people they
claim such kinship with. Some are true believers, I know, and some are
merely snake-oil salesmen. All are liars, either to themselves or
others or both. I have to wonder what turns and choices in life brought
them to such a place, to grow their hair long, learn to play the flute
and change their name to some animistic, gobbley-gook confection. What
real life trauma sent them on this spirit trail of fantasy? Why not
just admit to being a dark-skinned Italian with family in Ohio and let
the Indians alone? They have enough trouble. For it is the truth, as my
wise Okey Grandma used to say, that no matter where you go, there you
are.
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