Vine Deloria, Jr.

Vine Deloria, Jr.
Born	March 26, 1933(1933-03-26)
Died	November 13, 2005(2005-11-13) (aged 72)
Nationality	Standing Rock Sioux, American
Field	Author Educator Lawyer Theologian Historian

Vine Deloria, Jr. (March 26, 1933 – November 13, 2005) was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964-1967, he had served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing tribal membership from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and Washington, DC.

Deloria began his academic career in 1970 at Western Washington State College at Bellingham, Washington. He became Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona (1978-1990), where he established the first master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the United States. After ten years at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he returned to Arizona and taught at the School of Law.

Background and education

Deloria was the grandson of Tipi Sapa (Black Lodge), also known as Rev. Philip Joseph Deloria, an Episcopal priest and a leader of the Yankton band of the Nakota Nation. Vine, Jr. was born in Martin, South Dakota, near the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was first educated at reservation schools.

Deloria's father, Vine Sr. (1901–1990), studied English and Christian theology and became an Episcopal archdeacon and missionary on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, to which he transferred the family's tribal citizenship. Deloria Jr.'s aunt was the anthropologist Ella Deloria (1881–1971).

Deloria graduated from Kent School in 1951. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1958 with a degree in general science. Deloria then served in the Marines from 1954 through 1956.

Originally planning to be a minister like his father, Deloria Jr. in 1963 earned a theology degree from the Lutheran School of Theology then located in Rock Island, Illinois. In the late 1960s, he returned to graduate study and earned a law degree from the University of Colorado in 1970.

Activism

"Mr. Deloria ... steadfastly worked to demythologize how white Americans thought of American Indians," wrote Kirk Johnson.

In 1964, Deloria was elected executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. During his three-year term, the organization went from bankruptcy to solvency, and membership went from 19 to 156 tribes. Through the years, he was involved with many Native American organizations. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian.

While teaching at Western Washington State College at Bellingham, Washington, Deloria advocated for the treaty fishing rights of local Native American tribes. He worked on the legal case that led to the historic Boldt Decision of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. Judge Boldt's ruling in United States v. Washington (1974) validated Indian fishing rights in the state as continuing past the tribes' cession of millions of acres of land to the United States in the 1850s. Thereafter Native Americans had the right to half the catch in fishing in the state.

Writing

In 1969, Deloria published his first of more than twenty books, entitled Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. This book became one of Deloria's most famous works. In it, he addressed stereotypes of Indians and challenged white audiences to take a new look at the history of United States western expansionism. The book was released the year that students of the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement occupied Alcatraz Island to seek construction of an Indian cultural center, as well as attention in gaining justice on Indian issues. Other groups also gained momentum, with organizations such as the American Indian Movement staging events to gain media attention.

The book helped draw attention to the Native American struggle. Focused on the Native American goal of sovereignty without political and social assimilation, the book stood as a hallmark of Native American Self-Determination at the time. The American Anthropological Association sponsored a panel in response to Custer Died for Your Sins. The book was reissued in 2004 with a new preface by the author, noting "The Indian world has changed so substantially since the first publication of this book that some things contained in it seem new again."

Deloria wrote and edited many subsequent books and 200 articles, focusing on issues as they related to Native Americans, such as education and religion.

In 1995, Deloria argued in his book Red Earth, White Lies that the Bering land bridge never existed, and that the ancestors of the Native Americans had not migrated to the Americas over such a land bridge, as has been claimed by most archaeologists. Rather, he asserted that the Native Americans may have originated in the Americas, or reached them through transoceanic travel, as some of their creation stories suggested. While scholars believe some ancestors may have arrived by sea, they suggest that the scale of the migration was too large for such a means of transportation. Also, there are numerous lines of evidence that support the theory of multiple migrations by the land bridge.

Deloria's position on the age of certain geological formations, the length of time Native Americans have been in the Americas, their possible coexistence with dinosaurs, etc. were influential in the development of American Indian Creationism, which generally rejects scientific explanations of origins of indigenous peoples in the Americas. Deloria has been criticized for his embrace of American Indian creationism, by such scholars as Bernard Ortiz de Montellano and H. David Brumble, who says such views are not supported by the scientific and physical evidence, and contribute to problems of pseudoscience. Deloria often cited Christian creationist authors in support of his views relating to science. He also relied on Hindu creationists, such as Michael Cremo.

Academic career

In 1970, Deloria took his first faculty position, teaching at the Western Washington University College of Ethnic Studies in Bellingham, Washington. As a visiting scholar, he taught at the Pacific School of Religion, the New School of Religion, and Colorado College.

His first tenured position was as Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, which he held from 1978 to 1990. While at UA, Deloria established the first Master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the US. Such recognition of American Indian culture in existing institutions was one of the goals of the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. Numerous American Indian studies programs, museums and collections, and other institutions have been established since Deloria's first book was published.

Deloria next taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2000. When he retired from Boulder, he taught at the University of Arizona's College of Law.

Honors and legacy

• In 1974, after the publication of God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, Time Magazine named him as one of the primary "shapers and movers" of Christian faith and theology.
• In 1996, Deloria received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.
• In 1999, he received the Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year Award in the category of prose and personal/critical essays for his work Spirit and Reason.
• 2002, he received the Wallace Stegner award from the Center of the American West and was honorably mentioned at the 2002 National Book Festival.
• 2003, won the 2003 American Indian Festival of Words Author Award.

Marriage and family

Deloria married and had children.

Their son, Philip J. Deloria, is also a respected historian and author.

Death

After Deloria retired in May 2000, he continued to write and lecture until he died on November 13, 2005, in Golden, Colorado from an aortic aneurysm.

Creationism

Deloria has been criticized for his embrace of American Indian creationism. Deloria often cited Christian creationist authors in support of his views relating to science. Deloria also relied on Hindu creationists such as Michael Cremo.

Quotes

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours." –Vine Deloria, Jr.

“Who will find peace with the lands? The future of humankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things. Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land? As the long forgotten peoples of the respective continents rise and begin to reclaim their ancient heritage, they will discover the meaning of the lands of their ancestors. That is when the invaders of the North American continent will finally discover that for this land, God is red.” –Vine Deloria, Jr.

“Before any final solution to American history can occur, a reconciliation must be effected between the spiritual owner of the land – American Indians – and the political owner of the land – American Whites. Guilt and accusations cannot continue to revolve in a vacuum without some effort at reaching a solution.”–Vine Deloria, Jr.

Works

• Aggressions of Civilization: Federal Indian Policy Since The 1880s, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-87722-349-1.
• American Indian Policy In The Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8061-1897-0.
• American Indians, American Justice, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. ISBN 0-292-73834-X.
• Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1974.
• A Better Day for Indians, New York: Field Foundation, 1976.
• A Brief History of the Federal Responsibility to the American Indian, Washington: Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1979,
• Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, New York: Macmillan, 1969. ISBN 0-8061-2129-7.
• For This Land: Writings on Religion in America, New York: Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-92114-7.
• Frank Waters: Man and Mystic, Athens: Swallow Press: Ohio University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8040-0978-3.
• Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing (with Marijo Moore), New York: Nation Books, 2003. ISBN 1-56025-511-0.
• God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, Golden, Colorado: North American Press, 1994. ISBN 1-55591-176-5.
• The Indian Affair, New York: Friendship Press, 1974. ISBN 0-377-00023-X.
• Indians of the Pacific Northwest, New York: Doubleday, 1977. ISBN 0-385-09790-5.
• The Metaphysics of Modern Existence, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979. ISBN 0-06-450250-3.
• The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. ISBN 0-394-72566-2.
• Of Utmost Good Faith, San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971.
• Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, New York: Scibner, 1995. ISBN 0-684-80700-9.
• The Red Man in the New World Drama: A Politico-legal Study with a Pageantry of American Indian History, New York: Macmillan, 1971.
• Reminiscences of Vine V. Deloria, Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota 1970, New York Times oral history program: American Indian oral history research project. Part II; no. 82.
• The Right To Know: A Paper, Washington, D.C.: Office of Library and Information Services, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1978.
• A Sender of Words: Essays in Memory of John G. Neihardt, Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1984. ISBN 0-935704-22-1.
• Singing For A Spirit: A Portrait of the Dakota Sioux, Santa Fe, N.M.: Clear Light Publishers, 1999. ISBN 1-57416-025-7.
• Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader, Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Pub, 1999. ISBN 1-55591-430-6.
• Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations (with Wilkins, David E.), Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. ISBN 0-292-71607-9.
• We Talk, You Listen; New Tribes, New Turf, New York: Macmillan, 1970.
• Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths, Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Pub, 2002.
• The Pretend Indian: Images of Native Americans in the Movies,
• The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men, 2006

Secondary Literature

• DeMallie, Raymond J. (2006) "Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005)." American Anthropologist, Vol. 108, No. 4: 932-935.
• Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr., and the Critique of Anthropology, ed. by Thomas Biolsi, Larry J. Zimmerman, University of Arizona Press 1997, ISBN 0816516073
• Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria, Jr. and His Influence on American Society, ed. by Steve Pavlik, Daniel R. Wildcat, Fulcrum Publishing 2006, ISBN 1555915191

See also

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
• Native American Studies

References

• Wilkinson, Charles F. Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005. ISBN 978-0393051490.
• Wishart, David J., ed. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0803298620.
• Native American Authors Project: Vine Deloria Jr. Retrieved May 17, 2005.

External links

• Biography: Vine Deloria Jr.
• Native American Authors Project
• Vine Deloria, Jr.
• American Philosophical Association Newsletter on American Indians in Philosophy, Fall 2006