In Memoriam

My first Vine Deloria book I ever bought was Red Earth, White Lies. I really enjoyed the intellectual depth and passionate creativity found in his writings. His influence on me and many others will long be remembered and serve as inspiration for the next generation. He has definitely earned his spot in the NDN Hall of Fame for his dedication and activism on behalf of Native People everywhere.

The following was posted on November 15, 2005 by Editors Report in Indian Country Today:

Burn tobacco today for the wonderful spirit of Vine Deloria Jr., who passed into the world of the ancestors Nov. 13. Our sincerest condolences and warmest embrace reach out to his family and dear friends, and a great commiseration is extended to all of Indian country, where Deloria - author, teacher, lawyer, man - is universally respected and where his memory will live on for the generations.

Deloria, the world-renown Hunkpapa author and scholar from the Standing Rock Reservation, made a huge contribution to the Native peoples of North America and the world. His intellectual output, at once free-ranging with creativity and yet tight with academic rigor, pinned down the legal and historical bases desperately needed by the national Indian discourse. He provided a great piece of the intellectual locomotion upon which a moving platform of American Indian/Native studies research, publishing, production and teaching has been constituted.

His writing is legendary, launched by the classic ''Custer Died For Your Sins,'' which plugged directly into the common imagination of the American Indian Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. Along with ''We Talk, You Listen'' and ''Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties,'' these early Deloria works informed, during those crucial years, the widest cross-section of activists, students and older community leaders and traditional authorities. For a movement that had disparate and very independent bases in Indian country, where political persuasions ran the full spectrum of left to right and front to back, Deloria's deliberate, well-reasoned tone, backed by acerbic wit and genuine self-effacement, hit the formative chord.

The best of the thinking, and the music of a movement of survival, started then, with Deloria's exquisite ear for media concepts and the lyrics and guitar of a musician brother named Floyd ''Red Crow'' Westerman. Anthems of a movement came out of that collaboration - again, now in Westerman's lyrics, ''Custer died for your sins - a new day must begin - Custer died for your sins,'' and in the old 49er stand-by, ''BIA I am not your Indian anymore.'' Targeting anthropologists, missionaries and bureaucrats alike, Deloria wrote to Indians and was heard by the national audience. He wrote popular narratives on the contemporary Indian world, backing those up with deep and far-ranging academic research, writing and editing.

Deloria went on to write and edit more than 20 books and ranged from Native contemporary issues in law and history to ponder on scientific and theological themes. A considerable risk-taker in an era of prudent assertions in academia, Deloria in his middle years took pleasure in exploding and deconstructing all manner of facile theories by would-be Indian debunkers, such as Sheppard Krech III's critical review of indigenous lifeways in his book, ''The Ecological Indian: Myth and History.'' With his Indian-take dissection of evolutionary theory and its many little-founded claims, Deloria willingly stepped out of the progressive boat and onto his own canoe, daring to follow his instincts into important theological and scientific questions in order widen the field for Indian scholarship. He piqued many in academia and government with his explorations and assertions, but this was the way he seems to have preferred it - in the arena, moving the ground forward for the people.

The author and professor was an impeccable social activist, supporting Indian movement activism in all fields faithfully, always giving of himself through lectures and strategic seminars and court testimony wherever Indian tribal people called upon him. Executive director of the National Congress of American Indians early in his career, Deloria radicalized and activated the foremost Indian advocacy organization while creating lobbying campaigns and providing strategy for court cases: often while also defending major community treaty activists such as Nisqually elder and fishing rights legend Billy Frank Jr.

Deloria straddled the generations and carried the perspectives and perception of the generation of leaders who saw Indian country through the Depression, World War II and termination. He often reminisced fondly about the old-timers of his formative years.

We remember the beloved teacher for his generosity of spirit. As a professor, Deloria mentored and touched many people across all ethnic and religious persuasions while always managing to teach and guide the work of scores of Native graduate students and young activists, many of whom went on to gain success and prominence on their own. He wrote prefaces and introductions and recommendations by the dozens in careful assessments of the work at hand, but was always ready to add his considerable gravity to the work of newer hands. He would not tolerate fuzzy thinking, however, and could and would hold his students to task.

No strangers here to the inspiration extended by the existence of Vine Deloria Jr., we are ever-thankful to have had the opportunity to have celebrated his accomplishments earlier this year at the ceremony for the 2005 American Indian Visionary Award, which Deloria received in March.

In every generation, to paraphrase the late Creek Medicine Man Phillip Deere, there is one who hits the click-stone just right, and sparks the fire. In his generation, Vine Deloria Jr. sparked the intellectual fire of political, legal, historical and spiritual illumination. He lighted the path to the fountainhead of knowledge, which points the way ahead.

We are deeply thankful for the gift of this man who taught, in the evidence of his own life, that a gift of intellectual power is only given spirit by service to the people.


The following was posted on November 14, 2005 by Jim Adams in Indian Country Today:

TUCSON, Ariz. - Vine Deloria Jr., the intellectual star of the American Indian renaissance, passed on Nov. 13, after struggling for several weeks with declining health. His immeasurable influence became immediately apparent in an outpouring of tributes from all corners of Indian country.

''I cannot think of any words I could possibly say that even begin to capture the significance of this man and his work among Native people and on our behalf for the past half century,'' said Richard West Jr., director of the National Museum of the American Indian in a message to his staff.

''He has been our ranking scholar and intellectual light for all of those years.''

The NMAI was only one of many Native institutions that Deloria made possible or deeply influenced during his 73 years. From the activist end of the spectrum, a tribute on the Colorado AIM Web site said, ''It is safe to say that without the example provided by the writing and the thinking of Vine Deloria Jr., there likely would have been no American Indian Movement, there would be no international indigenous peoples' movement as it exists today, and there would be little hope for the future of indigenous peoples in the Americas.''

Deloria wrote more than 20 books, starting with his best seller ''Custer Died for your Sins'' in 1969. His powerful, acerbic criticism made a deep impression on the dominant culture as well as the activist movement then erupting on the scene. But he has an even longer career working behind the scenes of Native organizations.

He was drafted, as he put it, to be executive director of the National Congress of American Indians in 1964. He was a founding trustee of the NMAI when it consisted of the Gustav Heye collection in New York City and helped guide its sale to the Smithsonian Institution. He was a major thinker for the movements for sacred land protection, for treaty rights and for the protection and repatriation of Indian remains.

In spite of his trenchant criticism of European Christianity, he also served for a time on the executive committee of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. He was the fourth generation descendant of the Yankton Sioux prophet Saswe, and his father and grandfather were both prominent Episcopal churchmen.

TIME magazine once called Deloria one of the 10 most influential theologians of the 20th century. This March he received the second annual American Indian Visionary Award from Indian Country Today. In a self-deprecating acceptance speech abounding in anecdotes and teasing humor, Deloria gave credit to the remarkable generation of leaders that it was his privilege to work with, beginning with his service at the NCAI.

Deloria was born in 1933 in Martin, S.D., on the border of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Although his lineage was predominately Yankton Dakota, his grandfather Philip, an Episcopal priest, had enrolled the family in the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, where he was stationed.

Deloria served in the U.S. Marine Corps and received a master's degree from the Lutheran School of Theology in Rock Island, Ill. After his stint at the NCAI, he pursued an academic career, culminating in the position of professor of history at the University of Colorado.

He remained an incisive writer and social critic to the end. He refused an honorary degree from the University of Colorado because he disapproved of its performance during an athletic scandal. During his last year, he was at work on a major book on the miraculous deeds of American Indian medicine men.

Stay sweet 'n smile.....................Mz.