How Sweat Lodge Ceremonies Heal War’s Wounds

After trying conventional treatments for PTSD, an anthropologist who is also a veteran stepped into the first of many Native American ceremonies for vets and emerged ­­­­with much more than he initially expected.

Heated, dome-shaped sacred structures called sweat lodges (the architecture of one shown here) have been used for generations by Indigenous peoples in North America to support healing, revitalization, and community. Photo: Kevin Schafer/Photodisc/Getty Images

By Christopher Webb

When I arrived for my first Native American Sweat Lodge Ceremony in 2016, I was greeted and warmly embraced by Marty, a person of mixed tribal ancestry. He had long black hair and wore a T-shirt that read “Veteran’s Sweat Lodge.” When, earlier, I had contacted him and asked about attending a ceremony, I worried that I might not be welcome as a White man. I also had concerns that my status as an anthropologist, with the field’s long and problematic history with Indigenous people, might make some uncomfortable. He assured me that any veteran with a PTSD diagnosis was welcome — a criterion I meet.

“Our belief,” Marty told me, “is that if you are here, it is because Creator brought you here.”

Since my discharge from the U.S. Army a decade before, I had suffered from nightmares, hypervigilance, anxiety, depression, and a litany of things that were all attributed to “post-traumatic stress disorder” by clinicians, friends, and…