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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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