Native Cultural Activists Voices Silenced Again

After years of seeing free speech on the internet waning and seeing growing efforts to criminalize dissent, it’s important for everyone to pay attention to this controversy.

A cultural activist group, New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans has been working tirelessly for nearly a decade to warn unsuspecting consumers of the dangers or becoming involved with those who exploit Native American Spiritual practices for profit. Over they years, the people they expose as frauds have been successful in shutting down their discussion groups and bulletin boards and denying this First Nations’s group their First Amendment Rights. Please pass this information along to anyone who believes in the right to free speech on the internet:

For Immediate Release:

New Age Frauds Plastic Shamans or NAFPS, located online at http://www.newagefraud.org, has been shut down temporanily due to the lies and libel by an English New Age racist, John Lekay, editor of Heyoka Magazine. Lekay is a leading promoter of New Age exploitation and colonialism and seeks to dominate Native spiritual traditions, especially Lakota religion, by promoting a series of fringe characters, all the while silencing Native voices.

Mr. Lekay joined the Newagefraud.org forum a few weeks ago and tried to bully its members into withdrawing our criticism of New Age racism, exploitation, sexual abuse, and greed and commercialism. When we refused to back down, Lekay became abusive, arrogant, childish, and attacked our members, misrepresented the position of Newagfraud.org and the respected Native elders we support, and used foul and abusive language with elderly members, even repeatedly comparing Native elders who oppose the New Age movement to mass murderers.

The moderators banned Lekay for his abusive behavior. He responded by contacting our host with more misrepresentations and false accusations, demanding we take off criticism of him or the New Age exploiters he promoted. When we refused, our host, which has changed owners, shut us down.

Lekay has also contacted many people by e-mail, trying to obtain their support, which failed miserably. The only support he found was from a notorious white supremacist posing as part Comanche, David Yeagley, and one of his leading supporters, a violent racist named John Martin who has issued a number of death threats.

Lekay uses his Heyoka Magazine to publish several libelous articles about Dr Al Carroll, one of the founders of NAFPS, and Annika Banfeld the director of a Swedish charity for Native children who also helped produce a film against the exploitation of American Indian spirituality.

Furthermore, Heyoka Magazine (an on-line project) offers a platform to quite a number of known frauds and exploiters which get introduced as "elders" and serious, genuine persons.

Lekay is an ignorant, paranoid, and dangerous man who stated publicly he believed American Indians still live in tipis. He smears all who disagree with him as FBI and RMCP agents, or even tools of Bush and Cheney.

Lekay is spending huge sums of his own money to produce a film promoting the replacement of Arvol Looking Horse with Suzanne Dupree AKA "Looking Back Woman", an ex hairdresser who has been off the reservation for nearly twenty year yet claims to be the "true" possessor of the Lakota sacred pipe.

Lekay and Dupree have white European New Age supporters presently spreading libel and lies about Looking Horse and his planned trip to Europe to speak against New Age exploiters. While falsely accusing Looking Horse of seeking to sell the sacred pipe to European whites, some of these same European whites themselves are ceremony sellers and promoters of New Age frauds like "Rainbow Eagle" and the so called "Deer Tribe."

NAFPS would be very grateful if you contact a) our host to protest the shutting down of NAFPS, Powerweb Inc. http://www.powerweb.com/
email: admin [at] powerweb.net

b) the server hosting Heyoka Magazine to protest the continuing flow of libelous articles about Dr Al Carroll and other NAFPS members published at this site, as well as take down all libelous articles about Mr. Arvol Looking Horse and other actual elders.

http://www.readyhosting.com email form: http://www.readyhosting.com/support/supportForm.bml

c) Speak out against the lies and libel being spread about NAFPS, Dr. Al Carroll, other individual members of NAFPS, and especially against Arvol Looking Horse. legitimate hereditary Lakota spiritual leader

Thank you very much for your support.

We at NAFPS have been flooded by emails with kind words and people wanting to know what they can do. We'll be online again in a few days and continue to work against fraud and exploitation.

We will NOT be intimidated or silenced, EVER. All Lekay and the racists and exploiters he works have done is be mildly annoying and make themselves look pathetic, small minded, and intolerant.

Regards, New Age Frauds Plastic Shamans