Why Sit in Steam and Darkness? A Ceremony, Not a Sauna
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A low domed structure heated with steam from water poured on hot stones is used for purification and prayer across many Indigenous nations of North America. Treating it as a wellness activity has killed people.
What the structure is
The form is a low dome built from bent saplings lashed into a frame and covered with hides, blankets or canvas to make it lightless and to hold heat. A pit is dug in the centre. Stones are heated in a fire outside and carried in, and water is poured over them to fill the space with steam. Participants sit around the pit in darkness, and the ceremony proceeds in rounds, with the door opened between them. The details, the prayers, the songs, the number of rounds and the construction all vary between nations and between communities, and the variation is not incidental.
What it is for
The purposes are religious rather than recreational or medical:
- •Purification before or after other ceremonies
- •Prayer, individually and communally
- •Healing, understood in a spiritual rather than only physical sense
- •Marking significant events, including preparation and thanksgiving
- •Seeking guidance, sometimes in preparation for a longer quest
- •Maintaining the practice itself, which is an act of continuity
The history of suppression
The ceremony was illegal for a long period and that history explains a great deal about current attitudes. Government policy in both the United States and Canada aimed at eliminating Indigenous religious practice, with regulations from the 1880s prohibiting ceremonies, backed by withholding rations and by prosecution, and residential schooling removing children from the communities where practice was transmitted. Ceremonies continued in secret at real risk. Legal protection in the United States came only with legislation in 1978, and access for prisoners required further litigation after that. Practices survived unevenly, and restoring them has been a substantial part of cultural recovery since.
How the heat is managed
The physical conditions inside are severe and the practices surrounding them are protective rather than incidental, which is exactly what imitations tend to discard. The ceremony is led by somebody with responsibility for the people inside, who controls how many stones are brought in and how much water is poured. Rounds are separated by opening the door, which lets heat and steam out and lets participants leave. Participants are expected to say if they need to go, and leaving is not a failure. Duration, water intake beforehand and who should not take part at all are all matters the leader is expected to know. Removing that structure while keeping the steam is what makes commercial versions dangerous.
Why appropriation is a live issue
The ceremony has been widely copied by people outside the communities it belongs to, frequently for payment, and the objections are specific rather than general. Charging money for ceremony is contrary to the practice as understood by most of the nations concerned. Copying the form without the accompanying knowledge removes the safeguards, which are not decorative, and a commercially run event in Arizona in 2009 killed three participants and hospitalised many more, with the organiser convicted of negligent homicide. Elders had warned about exactly that kind of event beforehand. The practical objection and the cultural one point the same way, which is why declarations against the sale of ceremonies have been issued repeatedly.
The takeaway
A lightless dome heated by water poured on stones carried in from a fire outside is used for purification, prayer and healing across many nations, with the form, songs and structure varying between them. The ceremony was prohibited by government policy from the 1880s and protected in the United States only from 1978. A commercial imitation in 2009 killed three people, and its organiser was convicted.