Vine Deloria, Jr.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before

the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."

-Vine Deloria, Jr.

Vine Deloria, Jr. (1933-2005) was a Lakota scholar and Indian rights activist who radically affected the way people understand American Indian treaties. His work was devoted to the struggle for equal rights for Indians and for government recognition of tribal sovereignty.

A member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, he was born in a small town close to Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota and was educated in reservation schools. After serving in the U.S. Marines from 1954-56 he attended Iowa State University for a BS in general science. He went on to earn a Masters degree in theology from the Lutheran School of Theology, IL in 1963 and a law degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1970.

From 1964-1967 Deloria was the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, which advocates for federal recognition of Indian rights. In 1969 he published best-selling Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, an analysis of native-white interactions that decimates popular stereotypes of Indian culture. From that point he published over twenty books and 200 articles on Indian issues. His writing is ironic, witty, and to-the-point, with titles like We Talk, You Listen (1970). He hoped that his work would inspire Indian audiences to turn back to their own culture in the face of anti-Indian government policies.

In the Fall of 1970 he held his first faculty position with the College of Ethnic Studies at Western Washington University, Bellingham, where he became a legal advocate on behalf of tribal fishing rights. His work on the case contributed to the passage of the Boldt Decision of 1974, a landmark case that confirmed Indian fishing rights.

Later he taught at the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA and held visiting appointments at the Pacific School of Religion, the New School of Religion, and Colorado College. Here he utilized his training as a theologian to argue for the relevance of American Indian spiritual traditions in the modern world. In 1973 he published God is Red: A Native View of Religion and in 1974 he was named one of the most important "shapers and movers" of the Christian faith by Time magazine.

In 1978 he accepted a tenured appointment as professor of law and political science at the University of Arizona where he created the first Master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the United States.

Deloria's work was vital to current understanding and interpretation of treaties and the concept of tribal sovereignty. He rediscovered forgotten treaties, and served as an expert witness on Indian treaty rights. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 was included in the hearings following the AIM takeover of Wounded Knee thanks to Deloria's testimony. He co-authored three books that are standard in Indian law and policy classes in the U.S.: American Indians, American Justice (1983) and The Nations Within (1984) with Clifford M. Lytle and Constitutional Tribulations (1999) with David E. Wilkins.

Though he retired from full-time teaching in 2000, he continued teaching courses on treaties at the University of Arizona’s College of Law. He suffered an aortic aneurysm in 2005 and died at the age of 72.

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Johnson, Kirk

    2005  Vine Deloria Jr., Champion of Indian Rights, Dies at 72. New York Times, November 15. Electronic document:

         http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/national/15deloria.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, accessed 8/22/08.

Images:

"Vine Deloria, Jr.." Photograph by Rick Varges. Courtesy of California State University, Long Beach, American Indian Studies Department: http://www.csulb.edu/~aisstudy/nae/1950-1990.html.

Written by: Melissa Lorentz, 2008