Sweat, Spirits and Salvation : Chino prison inmates find a form of freedom in the scalding vapor of a tiny makeshift hut. The ritual is central to American Indian religious tradition.

John Funmaker surveys his congregation, a circle of bare-chested inmates squeezed into a low, beehive-shaped structure behind the wire and watchtowers of Chino state prison. The former convict-turned-spiritual adviser sees a vista of scars, tattoos and serious faces studded with dark eyes.

Funmaker nods, satisfied that everyone is primed for the coming rite of fire and water. He speaks briefly to the group, stressing that favorable portents bless the gathering. A hawk was spotted circling overhead not long ago, he reminds his audience. The east wind, strong and sustained, is a particularly good omen.

“Someone will be enlightened today,” he says.

Then Funmaker leans toward the low door of the willow-framed, blanket-covered tent, directing the service to begin.

“Bring on the rock people,” he commands.

A pitchfork, wielded by an unseen “fire-tender,” pokes through the doorway and drops super-heated rocks in a shallow pit scooped in the center of the crowded space. Grunts of “Good one!” and “Yah!” greet an especially big rock--almost a junior boulder--hefted through the door to lie hissing on the dirt. The rocks keep coming until seven--a sacred number--lay in the fire pit, arranged according to ancient prescription.

Funmaker orders the doorway closed. The fire-tender drapes a heavy blanket over the opening.

Instantly, Funmaker and the 15 other men are sealed inside a world of darkness, disorientation and personal isolation. The only reference point is the dull red glow of the stones--and that is quickly extinguished when Funmaker splashes water on the rocks, enveloping the claustrophobic sweat lodge in scalding vapor.

So begins another service of the Red Hawk Native American Religious Assn., a group of Chino inmates who observe traditional Indian religious practices, most notably the sweat lodge ceremony, a time-honored purification ritual that mixes prayer, song, mystic symbolism, group therapy and, for the unwary, pain.

Funmaker, 45, comes to the prison this day in an unusual role. For about a year, he has been a California prisons employee, a part-time spiritual adviser hired to conduct traditional Indian services, mainly in Southern California.

These rituals have been practiced for about 20 years in California prisons, inmates say, and the Chino group formally organized about three years ago. Jim Archuletta, a state Department of Corrections employee who works closely with Indian prisoners, says a concerted push began in 1977 to have Indian religion placed on equal footing with mainstream religions. Archuletta, who traces his ancestry to the Pueblo, Maricopa and Karok tribes, is one of the founders of the Intertribal Spiritual Commission, an organization that lobbies for the increased availability of Indian spiritual leaders to Indian inmates.

Although the drive has been successful, Archuletta says Indian spiritual leaders, whose access is usually limited to few hours per month at each institution, are hard-pressed to meet all inmate needs. He estimates there are 40 to 50 sweat lodges in federal and state institutions in California and that as many as 1,200 Indians are imprisoned, out of a total inmate population of 97,000. (A spokesman for the state Department of Corrections puts the number far lower, at 200 or fewer. The confusion stems from the fact that American Indians are not identified as an ethnic category in prison system records.)

In the course of an hour--sometimes it seems like a preview of eternity--Funmaker leads “the sweat.” He chants, preaches and sings, exhorting the inmates to practice virtue, to turn the other cheek, to give up crime and all forms of selfishness.

“I know it is hard, brothers,” he says.

Some of the men respond by talking of their fears and asking for prayers. One, due for parole in four days, worries that he’ll head for the nearest drug dealer once he is released. Another laments the recent death of his mother.

During the service, Funmaker opens the sealed lodge four times, providing brief breaks from the relentless heat. Each time he scans the faces in the lodge and urges the men to “not break the circle.” And each time he orders a fresh round of hot rocks dumped in the center of the sweat lodge. Participants are warned not to wear glasses, earrings or watches in the lodge because they might melt.

By the end of the ceremony, the heat is unbearable. It is possible to breathe only by holding a swatch of sagebrush leaves to the nose and mouth. The lodge floor is muddied by sweat pouring from the packed bodies. Some prisoners cough or make guttural noises, some twist and turn in search of a tolerable position and cooler air. One of Funmaker’s assistants sings and pounds on a drum, adding a pulsing sound to the overloaded environment.

Finally, it is over.

When the prisoners emerge from the symbolic womb, they are exhausted, mud-coated and gasping. But they also are elated, certain they have passed through a healing process.

“It cleanses me. It brings me back to my people,” one inmate says.

The triumphant moment caps a day of intense activity for the inmates, all housed in Chino’s minimum-security compound.

Before dawn, one of the prisoners left his barracks to build the fire that would heat the “grandfather” rocks. The fire pit is at one end of an outdoor fenced compound set aside for the Red Hawk society’s activities. Tucked between the fire station and other prison buildings, inmates say the enclosure represents a small measure of freedom, as well as holy ground.

Meanwhile, some 30 miles away John De Trinidad, Funmaker’s nephew, climbed a hillside as the sun came up, gathering sagebrush leaves to bring to the ceremony. De Trinidad, who repossesses cars during the week, sprinkled a pinch of tobacco on the ground before gathering the plants. He explains to a companion that the intention is to “give something back” to the land.

Later that morning, Red Hawk members tore down and burned the framework of the old sweat lodge, clearing the way for a new lodge to be built with fresh saplings brought in by Funmaker, who also donates a special buffalo skull--painted blue and green and earned in another Indian ritual, the Sun Dance--to the group.

Through much of the morning and early afternoon, Funmaker watches over the building of the new lodge, occasionally talking briefly with inmates who approach him.

“For most of them, it’s their first time building a sweat lodge,” he says, describing the structure as “a real humble little church that to us is like a cathedral.” He hopes the ceremony will teach the inmates “to be brave, to be generous, to be honest, all those beautiful virtues which they have not learned. . . . If we can get one or two or three of these brothers to learn the songs and the ceremonies, our culture can survive.”

As the inmates insert the willow poles in the ground and lash them together into a framework, Funmaker explains some of the symbolism of the lodge. Each of the 16 saplings represent one of the universal mysteries, such as the moon, the sun and the wind, he says. The red, black, yellow and white cloths tied to the framework represent a variety of elements, including the four directions of the compass and the four races of mankind.

“That means the black, red, yellow and white (people) are welcome in this lodge,” he adds. “There is no racism. . . . We pray for these colors.” He hopes that other races will joins Indians in prison sweat lodges but for the moment only one white man participates with the group.

Funmaker came to his principles of tolerance and rectitude the hard way.

A member of the Winnebago tribe of Wisconsin, he says he left the reservation as a young man and drifted aimlessly around the country, drinking and using marijuana and cocaine. Today, Funmaker describes himself as a “recovering alcoholic” and a former “small-time drug dealer” who had many brushes with the law. Raised in a traditional Indian family by parents who spoke little English, Funmaker says he was unprepared for the world beyond his home.

“I crisscrossed the country three or four times, hitchhiking. . . . I was on the street in L.A. about seven years,” he says, laughing at his past . “I’ve been in (Los Angeles) county jail and other facilities, I went through that system a few times. I’ve been in prison in Illinois and Wisconsin. . . . I think the longest was three years, for assault on a police officer.”

But his personal redemption began when he met an Indian spiritual leader “practicing ceremonies I was familiar with. . . . He was living in the city, but he seemed to be functional in both (Indian and white) cultures. . . . He helped me put those two things together, and I came out of the confusion.”

There is even a bright side to prison, he says. “When you’re in prison, that is the best time to do an intervention (against drugs and crime),” he says. “. . . For some reason, Christianity and all the other conventional therapies, they’re not effective for Native Americans. . . . So my philosophy is there’s something here you can relate to (in traditional ceremonies). It’s yours. . . . We have our own solutions, and we can find those solutions within our own culture. . . . Traditionally, we’ve never had (illegal) drugs in our culture; we never had alcohol in our culture.”

But although Indian beliefs are sometimes regarded as “pagan” by other prisoners, Funmaker asserts that they are not all that different from other religious teachings.

“Our teachings are very parallel to almost all religions, which is to respect one another, to be kind, to love one another, to respect yourself and, to put it in a nutshell, ‘If you can’t help anybody, don’t hurt anybody,’ ” he says.

Now a full-time drug and alcohol abuse counselor at a Long Beach program for American Indians, Funmaker estimates he spent eight years volunteering his services in prisons before going on the payroll.

To Funmaker--he says his name is a bad English translation from his native tongue--the revival of traditional practices is one facet of his mission to help other Indians, particularly the young, escape the cycle of alcohol, drugs and crime that once trapped him.

As for the inmates, they call Funmaker “Uncle John” as a sign of respect.

“John’s a great man, and he’s taught me a lot,” says Frank Duarte, a 36-year-old Apache Indian from Arizona who is serving a sentence for possession of stolen property. “For me, spiritually (the sweat lodge) has taught me to cope with society. I lost the anger . . .”

But Funmaker knows he will not always be successful.

“Sometimes I work with the young people on the outside, and the next thing I know, they’re over here and I say to them, ‘Remember what I told you?’ ”

And he shakes his head.