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Nevada prison officials urged to ban non-Indians from ceremonies

AP, via the Las Vegas Sun, USA
Mar. 8, 2006
www.lasvegassun.com

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Wednesday March 8, 2006

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – American Indian spiritual advisers say prison officials should bar whites from participating in Indian religious ceremonies conducted in a sweat lodge at Nevada State Prison.

The spiritual advisers commented at a hearing Tuesday following a background check by the Department of Corrections that shows many participants in sweat lodge ceremonies for inmates segregated from the general prison population are Caucasian.

Dorothy Nash Holmes, deputy director of the Department of Corrections, said officials checked with Indian tribes in response to complaints and found eight of nine participants in the sweat lodge are white or Hispanic.

That includes the sweat lodge’s spiritual leader, August Ardagna, and its pipe holder, Lionel Hernandez. Information on the ethnicity of nine other participants in the sweat lodge has not yet been completed.

“We took them at their word at what they were when they first came into prison,” Holmes said.

The inmates in the sweat lodge are sex offenders, violent offenders and others who have been segregated from the general prison population.

“They are just playing with our ceremonies,” said Buck Sampson, spiritual leader for the Reno-Sparks Indian colony.” What they are doing makes me sick.”

“Spirituality is a serious business. It is not a game,” said Lee Polanco, a spiritual leader from Winters, Calif.

Throughout the hearing, called by the Nevada Indian Commission, the spiritual leaders emphasized they are sensitive to people who may not be full-blooded Indians, but want follow the Indian ways.

Under federal law and Supreme Court decisions, Native Americans are permitted to practice their religion in prison.

Nevada Department of Correction regulations allow the use of sweat lodges and ceremonies in which sage, cedar and herbs are burned. Indians also may possess eagle feathers and herb bags.