In the spring of 1972 San Quentin became the first state prison in the United States to build a Sweat Lodge on Prison grounds, achieved through a long and arduous process beginning with a 602 and culminating in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Herb Sample, a life-term prisoner, argued before the courts that Native Americans should be allowed to practice their religion.
Previously the only options for a Native American prisoner to practice religion were through the Catholic or Protestant chapels.
Sample, a California Indian and a member of the Yokut Nation, argued equal protection and infringement of religious rights.
Three themes are central to Native American religion: purification, offering, and vision. The Sweat Lodge ceremony accomplishes all three.
The Sweat Lodge is an integral part of Native religious practice, which consists of heated rocks being brought into a dome-like structure, built from willow saplings. Water is poured upon the super-heated rocks as prayers are said in Native tongue.
The sweat lodge has been used for prayer since time immemorial in the United States.
The first Sweat Lodge in San Quentin was built with the help of Archie “Fire” LameDeer, a well-known and respected Lakota Sioux medicine man and healer, who wrote a 20-page blueprint for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation explaining the procedures and protocols for building and maintaining a Sweat Lodge. These protocols are still adhered to.
The Sweat Lodge at San Quentin and indeed all Sweat Lodges statewide are considered sacred ground and have been designated as such by the federal court order issued in 1972.
LameDeer,obeying his vision, came to California in the 1960s to build a “Western Gate,” a Sweat Lodge in the Western part of the United States. In order to fulfill a prophecy foretold by ancient ancestors long before the Europeans arrived.
After the first Sweat Lodge was built at San Quentin, one was built in state prisons in Nevada and Arizona. Later Sweat Lodges were built in prisons throughout the United States.
Sweat Lodges outside of California were not personally built by LameDeer, but by Native American spiritual leaders associated with Native spiritual practices who followed LameDeer’s protocols and procedures.
The Sweat Lodges in California as well as countless lodges throughout the United States have served to keep Native American prisoners in touch with their cultural roots and spiritual practices.
It would be next to impossible to tabulate the countless Native men and women who have changed their lives in a positive manner due to the influence of the Sacred Sweat Lodge ceremony. A Native practitioner believes that the water poured on the super-heated stones extorts pain locked within them. This essential belief has helped many Native American’s lead clean and sober lifestyle with the purification that comes from the Sacred Sweat Lodge.
