Red Prophet: The Punishing Intellectualism of Vine Deloria, Jr.

by David E. Wilkins

Overview

A deep examination of the life and legacy of Vine Deloria Jr., a key figure in Native American intellectual and political history.

In the face of looming, tumultuous global change, Red Prophet: The Punishing Intellectualism of Vine Deloria Jr. is a guide for those venturing into Vine's work in search of answers and solutions to Indigenous and non-Indigenous politics, ecology, and organization. David E. Wilkins's insights, based on his personal relationship with Deloria, document the sacred life and legacy of "one of the most important religious thinkers of the twentieth century" (TIME).

This biography explores Deloria's intellectual contributions, activism, and spiritual leadership. It offers a deep dive into Indigenous legal, religious, social, and philosophical tactics. A must-read for those seeking to understand Native American history, Indigenous rights, and the ongoing struggle for sovereignty. Perfect for readers interested in political science, history, and social commentary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682751657
Publisher:	Fulcrum Publishing
Publication date:	07/01/2018
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

David E. Wilkins is a citizen of the Lumbee Nation and holds the McKnight Presidential Professorship in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. Wilkins is the author or editor of a number of books, including Dismembered: Native Disenrollment and the Battle for Human Rights. His articles have appeared in a range of social science, law, history, and ethnic studies journals.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Eyes Wide Open

Politics of Activism Infused by Reflective, Responsible Sovereignty

Vine Victor Deloria Jr., a Yankton by blood, was born in Martin, South Dakota, on March 26, 1933. He was the first of three children that his father, Vine V. Deloria Sr., and his mother, Barbara S. Eastburn Deloria, would bring into the world. His father and grandfather, Philip J. Deloria (Tipi Sapa), Standing Rock Lakota citizens, were both Episcopal priests. He grew up in Martin, a small border town next to the Pine Ridge Reservation where his father was doing missionary work.

His grandfather, Philip, was the son of the well-known Yankton chief, François (Saswe) des Lauriers. Saswe, a powerful holy man in the Lakota tradition, was a signer of the 1858 accord with the United States by which the Lakota ceded a great deal of territory in southeastern South Dakota in exchange for retention of their reduced lands and other vital rights and benefits along the Missouri River. Throughout his life, Saswe had a series of visions and life experiences that would impact generations of his family's vocational and religious choices, culminating in a very active presence in the Episcopal Church well into the late twentieth century. His visions guided his decision to direct his son to become a Christian and a priest.

As the son of a prominent priest, Vine Deloria Jr. traveled frequently with his father in Indian Country and attended both church services and traditional tribal events. One of his most lasting and formative boyhood memories was of a visit to the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. He recalled seeing some of the survivors of that horrific event on the reservation during his childhood.

Vine attended an off-reservation school in Martin before heading out in 1949 as a sixteen-year-old to attend Kent School, a private college-prep institution in Connecticut. Deloria graduated in 1951 and then enrolled at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, with the goal of becoming a geologist. In 1952 in an application for a John Whitney Foundation educational grant, he wrote that his plan was to earn a degree in geological engineering because "our country needs geologists very badly ... I have a very deep feeling for the land since my ancestors, the Sioux Indians, once ruled it." "My ultimate purpose," he said, "is to become a good geologist. Then I would like to remain in South Dakota to help build up the state, particularly the immense tracts of land held by the Indians."

Deloria elaborated further, indicating the early primacy of land in his consciousness:

There are many Indian ministers, teachers, government workers, and so on. But I know there is a great need for a geologist, who is himself an Indian and naturally has a keen interest in the welfare of the Indians. For example, I know that the average Sioux Indian in South Dakota has very little conception of mineral deposits which might be underneath the very ground he owns. I would like, not only to locate such deposits, but also enlighten the owners so that they will stop selling their lands so cheaply.

While seemingly deeply committed to the study of geology, he flunked out of school upon the realization that he was not meant to be a "rockhound." He then briefly attended Iowa State College in Ames, but found himself uninspired by that as well. He decided to enlist in the US Marine Corps, where he was trained as a telephone repairman and honorably served from 1954 to 1956. Deloria always recalled his military years with affection.

Financial support from the GI bill enabled him to return to Iowa State College, and it was there that he met his future wife, Barbara Jeanne Nystrom. They graduated and married on the same day in 1958. Together, they had three children: Philip, Daniel, and Jeanne.

The next three years were unsettled. Deloria attended graduate school at the University of Oregon for time, but money was short, so he and Barbara decided to move to Rock Island, Illinois, where he worked in a machine shop for a year before he enrolled in the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. In 1960, he and his family moved again, this time to Puerto Rico where he taught English at Colegio San Justo, an Episcopal boarding school close to San Juan, but that endeavor "blew up after three months," and he returned to Lutheran Seminary where he earned a master's degree in 1963.

He then went to work with the United Scholarship Service in Denver. A little more than a year later his career would again take a dramatic shift when at the age of thirty-one he became the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the country's leading Native interest group. Three years at NCAI provided Vine the opportunity to learn firsthand about the major issues, hopes, and concerns of Indigenous people throughout the United States.

By the end of his term, he understood that a law degree was necessary if he hoped to tackle critical issues such as defense of treaty rights, land reacquisition, empowerment of Native government self-determination, and recovery and revitalization of the concept of tribal sovereignty.

Custer Awakens!

When he applied to law school, Deloria had letters of recommendation from US senator Karl Mundt of South Dakota, Robert L. Rosenthal of the United Scholarship Service (where he had served as a field representative before being elected to the NCAI), and Jack Greenberg, director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Rosenthal's letter was the most personal. He wrote that he had come to know Deloria well over the years. "He was young and new and naïve in the field of Indian affairs when he began work for USS," said Rosenthal. But, he continued, "he is now well versed in this field as an independent scholar, and he has accomplished this self-education while on the job, developing a strong organization and serving as administrator, fund-raiser, and coordinator of a wide variety of activities."

Deloria entered the University of Colorado Law School in 1967 and received his JD in 1970. Undertaking three years of law school while raising a family would have been enough for most people, but during those years he also worked directly with several Native nations and organizations, including the Mohawk Tribe of the Caughnawaga Reserve in Quebec, Canada, and several Native peoples in Nevada and South Dakota. He served on a committee to deal with the complications associated with the Alcatraz Takeover off the coast of San Francisco, and was on several national boards, including the Council of Indian Affairs, the Board of Inquiry into Hunger and Malnutrition, the National Office for the Rights of the Indigent, the Committee on Indian Work, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, and the Southwest Intergroup Council.

Perhaps most impressively, it was during this period that he wrote his first and best-selling book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. It was published in 1969, the year before he graduated from law school. Custer, of course, catapulted his name and, more importantly, his visionary intellectual ideas, into the public arena at a time of social upheaval and questioning. It would inspire a generation to consider the human and civil rights of Native peoples, and its concepts resonate today.

Long before the word decolonization became ubiquitous, Deloria, in Custer, advocated for Red Power, the bold assertion that Indigenous peoples can speak, think, and act for themselves. He rejected federal paternalistic policies and demanded that church leaders, anthropologists, and other so-called Indian experts leave Native peoples alone and show respect for Indigenous self-determination and diversity.

He also warned Native peoples about the pitfalls of mimicking the political and social movement strategies used by other groups legitimately seeking to exercise and define their rights within the United States. For example, some Natives were copying methods and ideologies employed by African Americans rallying for Black Power. While Deloria supported the efforts of this movement, he felt strongly that Indians had unique concerns that should not be simplified or subsumed by others. "I refuse," said Deloria, "to do the Indian thing in a black context."

Custer was reviewed positively by Natives and critics alike, but some academics — most notably anthropologists, the recipients of a full chapter of biting criticism — felt maligned. Some wrote Deloria directly to express their concerns, and in August 1969, he responded to one such letter from anthropologist George E. Troutt III, who had written to inquire what he needed to do to be more useful. Deloria, in very frank language, said that Troutt and other white academics needed to stop feeling "guilty" and needed to stop "trying to help the Indians."

Deloria then laid out in very clear terms what would actually be required for Natives and anthropologists to have an improved relationship. "What is really needed by Indians," he said,

is anthros who can help us search out certain writings, papers, studies and theories which we can already detect would have a certain value to us but which we had not the foggiest idea of where to look for them. If we had some means of describing a certain situation — i.e., the role of religion in a differentiated and undifferentiated society and the respective functions in each political action, we would be able to use these materials to orient our tribal leaders and others into the theoretical alternatives which they might have that they have not considered.

In closing, Deloria bluntly declared,

Indians hate white anthros because they are always trying to be Indians and they lord their secret knowledge over Indians as if they were possessors of some great truth. While Indians don't articulate doctrines in the same way there are a lot of ideas that each group is expressing that could be communicated to society at large if techniques of translation and transmission [emphasis his] were developed.

He had similar correspondence with Robert Lane, an anthropologist working in the Northwest. Interestingly, Lane was married to Barbara Lane, also a well-respected anthropologist who was working at that time directly with several Native nations on their fishing rights. Her expert testimony and research would later be useful in the reestablishment of the tribal nations' treaty right to fish in the region through the Boldt decision. What is notable in his letter to Robert Lane is Deloria's candid explanation of his political strategy and description about his own identity.

As for strategy, he said,

I do not believe that demonstrations can carry a group of 1 million in a nation of 203 million very far without getting them squashed. So in a certain sense we have to find leverage points and play with meaningless stereotypes to drive wedges into the outside walls which encompass us. The Indian issue, as I see it, is reconstituting an undifferentiated worldview which can feel comfortable with electronic technology yet find a human social value system beyond Christian economic Darwinism.

Deloria then said that he and a leading non-Indian historian who "always tries to compete with me as to who is the greater Indian," had issues that left them both wanting from an Indigenous perspective. "I am," said Deloria, "really a political-poet with a contemporary Indian background — a Zionist who does not relate to the Hebrew-Indian tradition except as a way to keep oppressors from the real traditionalists."

Not long after this, Deloria confronted his relationship with the Episcopal Church. He had been elected to the Executive Council in 1968, but by the fall of 1969 was already deeply frustrated by the church leadership's lack of progress on Indigenous issues. In September he wrote Reverend G. H. Jack Woodard:

I will be submitting my resignation ... in the next week and going into the hills to join the gathering hostiles and pagans. I realized from the beginning that it was a slight outside chance to get Indians on the agenda of the church, hence when it has now become apparent that few people either on staff or council have the conceptual context to understand the Indian situation, I would feel that it is disruptive to continue to bring Indian concerns and concepts to the attention of the church.

"We shall simply," said Deloria,

have to go on and do our thing and when the church wakes up we will have passed far beyond them. At any rate I can't see staying in the church and struggling for years to get the church to act while the rest of the Indian world marches on beyond Christianity. Personally I have to maintain my political position with respect to the movements in Indian Affairs and so I must switch early or not at all.

Bringing Activism into the Academy

During the early 1970s he produced a number of important works, including We Talk, You Listen (1970), Of Utmost Good Faith (1971), The Red Man in the New World: A Politico-Legal Study with a Pageantry of American Indian History (1971), God Is Red (1973), and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974). These works coincided with his early involvement in the Academy. He accepted teaching engagements at Western Washington University (1970 — 1972); UCLA (1972 — 1973); Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California (1975); New School of Religion, Pontiac, Michigan (1976); and Colorado College (1977 — 1978).

In April 1973, Deloria wrote John Hadsell at the San Francisco Theological Seminary to inform Hadsell of his desire to begin work on an advanced degree at the seminary. He introduced himself as an "Indian political activist and writer and not a professional clergyman," but emphasized that he had no intentions of entering the ministry. What he intended was to "continue studies in the philosophical basis of religions and religious experiences and expressions." Deloria described his scholarship, and stressed that his latest book, God Is Red, was due out in the fall.

"The reason I would like to undertake studies in theology at this late date," Deloria explained, "is that I would like to develop a theology of nature based upon the American Indian experiences and beliefs which can be used to bridge the gap between peoples and between the current concern for ecology and the traditional Christian doctrines of exploitation of nature." He continued by noting that the recent Wounded Knee crisis in South Dakota, "if placed in the context of the Old Testament prophets concerned with land reform would be a startling ethnological event in itself." "I feel," he concluded, "that a great deal of new material from the American Indian experience would produce some theological insights for the world today that would be quite creative and unexpected. I would like to try and develop this theme."

In 1978, Deloria accepted a tenured position as professor of law and political science at the University of Arizona. It was there he developed the first MA degree in federal Indian policy, under the rubric of political science, which was later transformed to a degree in American Indian studies. This was the program where I began my work with him. He left Tucson in 1990 and was tenured in history, law, religious studies, and political science at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He remained in Boulder until retirement in 2000, although he and his wife split residency, living in Tucson, Arizona, for part of the year.

For Deloria, being an active participant in life was always about dignity and respect, sovereignty and self-determination, sacredness of space and place, interdependency and interrelatedness, and, ultimately, maturity — individual, national, intercultural, and intergovernmental maturity. Arguably the most intellectually gifted and articulate spokesperson for Indigenous nationhood, Deloria was never quite comfortable with the notion that he was, in fact, the principal champion of tribal nations and their citizens, since he demanded that each Native nation and every tribal citizen express confidence in their own distinctive identities, develop their own unique talents, and wield their collective and individual sovereignty in a way that enriched not only their own nations but all those around them.

Deloria fought tirelessly for human, not just Indigenous, freedom and for ecological respect and common sense approaches to heal the environment's gaping wounds. He saw that America's national soul would never be cleansed until justice had been fully achieved by Indigenous nations, African Americans, Latin Americans, Asian Americans, women, impoverished whites, other disempowered groups, and especially young people.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Red Prophet"
by .
Copyright © 2018 David E. Wilkins.
Excerpted by permission of Fulcrum Publishing.
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Table of Contents

List of Tables vii

Foreword ix

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxiii

Chapter 1 Eyes Wide Open

Politics of Activism Infused by Reflective, Responsible Sovereignty 1

Chapter 2 Paths of Resistance

Challenges, Ideas, and Admonitions to the Federal (and State) Governments 27

Chapter 3 Feet of Clay

Challenges, Ideas, and Admonitions to Native Governments and Peoples 91

Chapter 4 Lighting the Way Ahead

Conclusion 137

Afterword 145

Appendix: Curriculum Outline

Problems and Issues Relating to American Indians 149

Notes 161

Index 179

Editorial Reviews

"Perhaps we will all learn even more about the American Indian gift of prophecy and a sense of the sacredness of place as the drama at Standing Rock and elsewhere in America continues to unfold. Fortunately, we now have David Wilkins's Red Prophet: The Punishing Intellectualism of Vine Deloria Jr., to guide us on our journey to understanding the increasingly vital legacy of Vine Deloria Jr." —Bobby Bridger

"Every now and then a book comes along that reminds us that there is a vast history of the real work that Native writers have been doing in the 20th century that advances our knowledge of the “race” problem in the United States in important ways." —Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Indian Z

"With the above in mind, one can practically hear Deloria dictating to Wilkins what ideas to highlight, which excerpts to quote, and how to organize this paean to Deloria’s legacy into something that wants to look like an intellectual biography but is more of a prolonged eulogy delivered by a devoted son to his spiritual father." —David Martínez, Wicazo Sa Review

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