Vine Deloria, Jr.
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Vine Deloria, Jr. (March 26, 1933 – November 13, 2005) was a Sioux author, theologian, historian, and activist.
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Life and work
Deloria was the grandson of Tipi Sapa (Black Lodge) aka 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 Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Indian Reservation, and was first educated at reservation schools. Deloria's father, Vine Sr., studied English and Christian theology, became an Episcopal archdeacon and missionary on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, to which he transferred the family's tribal citizenship. Deloria Jr. originally sought to be a minister, like his father, and in 1963 received a theology degree from the Lutheran School of Theology in Rock Island, Illinois. (He had first graduated from Iowa State University in 1958.) His aunt was the anthropologist Ella Cara Deloria. Deloria earned a law degree from the University of Colorado in 1970. From 1964 to 1967, Deloria was Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians.
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, Deloria addressed Indian stereotypes and challenged white audiences to take a new look at the history of American western expansionism. The American Anthropological Association sponsored a panel in response to Custer Died for Your Sins.
Deloria wrote and edited many subsequent books, focusing on many issues as they relate to Native Americans, such as education and religion. He was involved with many Native American organizations, and was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian beginning in 1977. Deloria taught at the University of Arizona from 1978 to 1990, and then taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 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. He was honorably mentioned on October 12, 2002 at the 2002 National Book Festival and also received the Wallace Stegner award from the Center of the American West in Boulder on October 23, 2002. He was the winner of the 2003 American Indian Festival of Words Author Award.
After Deloria retired in May of 2000, he continued to write and lecture until he died on November 13, 2005.
Criticism
Deloria was criticized for his embrace of American Indian creationism. Deloria often cited Christian creationist authors in support of his assaults on science. Deloria also relied on Hindu creationists such as Michael Cremo.
Deloria was further criticized for his reliance on authors of pseudoscience such as Zecharia Sitchin and Immanuel Velikovsky. Deloria cited Sitchin to argue that white people were created by space aliens. Deloria also claimed to believe that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, and that the stegosaurus was still extant in the 19th century.
The Rocky Mountain News excoriated Deloria for "the utterly wacky nature of some of his views,” and “his contempt for much science." John Whittaker referred to Deloria's Red Earth White Lies as "a wretched piece of Native American creationist claptrap that has all the flaws of the Biblical creationists he disdains...Deloria's style is drearily familiar to anyone who has read the Biblical creationist literature...At the core is a wishful attempt to discredit all science because some facts clash with belief systems. A few points will suffice to show how similar Deloria is to outspoken creationist author Duane Gish or any of his ilk."
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 Moore, Marijo), 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|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.
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
The Theme of Red Earth, White Lies
Extinction is the flip side of evolution. If you don't believe in cosmic catastrophies with in the age of modern man, and most scientists don't, then about the only other thing which is known to be able to bring about the extinction of entire animal species over large continents is man. Now, in order to do this sort of thing, man needs two things, i.e. firepower and mobility, in quantities which Indian ancestors never dreamed of; in real life, the first time man ever acquired such capapabilities on this planet was the army of Chengis Khan. Nonetheless since there is no other explanation for the recent megafauna dieouts in North America which scientists want to hear about, they normally blame these extinctions on the predations of Indian ancestors. These theories are called the overkill hypothesis, and the "blitzkrieg" overkill hypothesis. Idiotic though they might be, they are nonetheless taught in colleges and universities. Red Earth, White Lies is basically a full blown refutation of these ideas. Vine has done an inestimable service to scholars in exposing this particular variety of junk science for what it is.
