Vine Deloria Jr. facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Vine Deloria Jr.
Born	Vine Victor Deloria Jr. (1933-03-26)March 26, 1933 Martin, South Dakota
Died	November 13, 2005(2005-11-13) (aged 72) Golden, Colorado
Nationality	Standing Rock Sioux, American
Theological work

Vine Victor Deloria Jr. (born March 26, 1933 – died November 13, 2005) was a very important writer, thinker, historian, and activist who worked hard for Native American rights. He was a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation.

He became famous for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969). This book helped people across the country pay attention to issues facing Native Americans. It came out the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement, which was a time when Native Americans were speaking up for their rights.

From 1964 to 1967, Vine Deloria Jr. was the leader of the National Congress of American Indians. During his time, the number of tribes involved grew a lot, from 19 to 156. Later, starting in 1977, he joined the board of the National Museum of the American Indian. This museum now has buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C..

Vine Deloria Jr. also taught at several universities. He started teaching in 1970 at Western Washington State College. He later became a professor at the University of Arizona (1978–1990). There, he started the first master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the United States. He also taught at the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arizona's College of Law. NBC once called him the "star of the American Indian renaissance."

Early Life and School

Vine Deloria Jr. was born in 1933 in Martin, South Dakota. This was close to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota people. His parents were Barbara Sloat and Vine Victor Deloria Sr. His father studied English and Christian religion and became an Episcopal archdeacon and missionary on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. His father also moved their family's tribal membership to Standing Rock.

Vine Jr.'s aunt, Ella Cara Deloria, was a well-known anthropologist. His grandfather, Tipi Sapa (Black Lodge), was also an Episcopal priest and a leader of the Yankton band of the Dakota Nation.

Vine Deloria Jr. first went to schools on reservations. He then graduated from Kent School in 1951. In 1958, he earned a degree in general science from Iowa State University. He also served in the United States Marine Corps from 1954 to 1956.

At first, he planned to become a minister, like his father. In 1963, he earned a degree in theology from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Later, in 1970, he earned a law degree (J.D.) from the University of Colorado Law School.

Working for Native American Rights

In 1964, Vine Deloria Jr. was chosen to be the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. During his three years in this role, the organization became much stronger. The number of tribes that were members grew from 19 to 156. He continued to be involved with many Native American groups throughout his life.

Deloria also started and led two groups: the Institute of American Indian Law and the Institute for the Development of Indian Law. These groups aimed to help Native American tribes and organizations with legal training and support. For example, in 1971, they worked on a plan to help tribes fight against unfair taxes from federal, state, and local governments.

In 1974, Deloria was an expert witness in the Wounded Knee Trials. He was the first person the defense lawyers called to speak. An hour after he started, the judge decided that the important Sioux Treaty of 1868 should be used as evidence in the case.

Starting in 1977, he became a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian. This museum's first location was in New York City.

While teaching at Western Washington State College, Deloria also helped Native American tribes in the area with their treaty fishing rights. He worked on a legal case that led to the important Boldt Decision in 1974. This court ruling said that Native Americans had the right to half the fish caught in the state. They could also fish in areas away from their reservations and help manage the fisheries with the state.

His Books and Ideas

In 1969, Vine Deloria Jr. published his first book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. This book became one of his most famous works. In it, he talked about unfair ideas people had about Native Americans. He asked non-Native Americans to look at the history of the United States differently, especially how Native Americans were treated.

The book came out the same year that students from the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement took over Alcatraz Island. They wanted to build a Native American cultural center and get justice for Native American issues, including recognizing tribal sovereignty (the right of tribes to govern themselves). Other groups, like the American Indian Movement, also started to gain attention around this time.

Deloria's book helped bring attention to the struggles of Native Americans. It focused on the goal of Native American tribes to be self-governing without losing their culture. The book was re-released in 1988, and Deloria wrote that 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 more than twenty books and 200 articles. He focused on topics important to Native Americans, like education and religion. In his 1995 book Red Earth, White Lies, Deloria suggested that the Bering Strait Land Bridge might not have existed. He argued that the ancestors of Native Americans might not have crossed a land bridge from Asia. Instead, he thought they might have come from the Americas originally or traveled across the ocean, as some Native American creation stories suggest. He believed that modern science often didn't understand the true history and traditions of American Indians.

Deloria also had some ideas that were different from what most scientists believed. For example, he questioned the age of some geological formations and how long Native Americans had been in the Americas. He even believed that people might have lived alongside dinosaurs. He argued that science was like a religion with its own strict rules, and that scientists sometimes criticized those who had different ideas.

In some of his writings, Deloria also criticized Marxism. He felt it didn't fully understand non-European ideas and simplified complex issues like family and justice. However, he also noted that Marxism had some similarities to Indigenous ways of thinking and that its criticism of capitalism was valuable.

Teaching at Universities

In 1970, Vine Deloria Jr. began his teaching career at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. He also taught as a visiting scholar at other schools, including the Pacific School of Religion and Colorado College. From 1972 to 1974, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His first permanent teaching job was as a Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, where he taught from 1978 to 1990. While there, Deloria created the first master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the United States. This was a big step in recognizing Native American culture within universities.

After Arizona, Deloria taught at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 to 2000. Even after retiring from there, he continued to teach at the University of Arizona's College of Law. In 2004, he turned down an honorary degree from the University of Colorado.

Awards and Lasting Impact

Vine Deloria Jr. received many honors for his work:

• In 1974, after his book God Is Red: A Native View of Religion came out, Time Magazine called him one of the main "shapers and movers" of Christian faith and theology.
• In 1996, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.
• In 1999, the Vine Deloria Jr. Library at the National Museum of the American-Smithsonian was named after him.
• In 1999, he won the Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year Award for his book Spirit and Reason.
• In 2002, he received the Wallace Stegner award and was recognized at the 2002 National Book Festival.
• In 2003, he won the 2003 American Indian Festival of Words Author Award.
• In 2018, after his death, he was chosen as one of the first people to be inducted into the new National Native American Hall of Fame.

Family Life

Vine Deloria Jr. was married to Barbara. They had three children: Philip, Daniel, and Jeanne. He also had seven grandchildren. His son, Philip J. Deloria, is also a respected historian and writer.

His Passing

After retiring in May 2000, Vine Deloria Jr. continued to write and give talks. He passed away on November 13, 2005, in Golden, Colorado, due to an aortic aneurysm.

Works

• Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, New York: Macmillan, 1969. ISBN: 0-8061-2129-7; later edition with new preface: Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. ISBN: 978-08061-2129-1.
• We Talk, You Listen; New Tribes, New Turf, New York: Macmillan, 1970.
• The Red Man in the New World Drama: A Politico-legal Study with a Pageantry of American Indian History, New York: Macmillan, 1971.
• Of Utmost Good Faith, San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971.
• God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, Grosset & Dunlap, 1973. ISBN: 9780448021683.
• Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1974.
• The Indian Affair, New York: Friendship Press, 1974. ISBN: 0-377-00023-X.
• A Better Day for Indians, New York: Field Foundation, 1976.
• 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.
• American Indians, American Justice, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. ISBN: 0-292-73834-X.
• A Sender of Words: Essays in Memory of John G. Neihardt, Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1984. ISBN: 0-935704-22-1.
• The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. ISBN: 0-394-72566-2.
• American Indian Policy In The Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. ISBN: 0-8061-1897-0.
• Frank Waters: Man and Mystic, Athens: Swallow Press: Ohio University Press, 1993. ISBN: 0-8040-0978-3.
• Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, New York: Scribner, 1995. ISBN: 0-684-80700-9.
• For This Land: Writings on Religion in America, New York: Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 0-415-92114-7.
• 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.
• Power and Place: Indian Education in America (with Daniel Wildcat), Golden, CO: Fulcrum Pub., 2001. ISBN: 155591859X
• Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations (with David E. Wilkins), Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. ISBN: 0-292-71607-9.
• Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths, Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Pub, 2002.
• Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing (with Marijo Moore), New York: Nation Books, 2003. ISBN: 1-56025-511-0.
• The World We Used to Live In: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO. 2006. ISBN: 978-1-55591-564-3(pbk.); ISBN: 1-55591-564-7.
• We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. ISBN: 978-0803259850
• Aggressions of Civilization: Federal Indian Policy Since The 1880s, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. ISBN: 0-87722-349-1.
• A Sender of words: essays in memory of John G. Neihardt. Salt Lake City: Howe Bros., 1984. ISBN: 0935704221
• The Indian Reorganization Act: Congresses and Bills. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. 978-08061-3398-0.
• Reminiscences of Vine V. Deloria, Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, New York Times oral history program: American Indian oral history research project. Part II; no. 82. 1970.
• The Right To Know: A Paper, Washington, D.C.: Office of Library and Information Services, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1978.
• A Brief History of the Federal Responsibility to the American Indian, Washington, D.C.: Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1979.

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  Vine Deloria Jr.