Deloria, Vine, Jr.,
1933–2005, American author, theologian, historian, and activist, b.
Marin, S.Dak. Considered by some to be the leading intellectual on American
and Indigenous philosophy and politics from the second half of the 20th
century, Vine Deloria was a lawyer, theologian, and popular writer. A member
of the Standing Rock Sioux (Lakota) nation, he was born near the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation. After serving in the Marines, he graduated from Iowa
State University in 1958. He would go on to earn a master’s degree in
theology from Lutheran School of Theology in 1963 and a JD from Colorado Law
in 1970. Deloria served as a tenured professor of political science at the
University of Arizona from 1978 to 1990, where he established the first
master’s degree program in American Indian Studies. In 1990 he joined
the faculty at the University of Colorado, where he taught until he retired
in 2000.
Deloria was deeply involved in American Indian policy and activism, and he was
credited with coining the term "Red Power," referring to the civil rights
activist movement of Native Americans in the late 1960s and 1970s. From 1964
to 1967, he served as the executive director for the National Congress of
American Indians (NCAI). Deloria also served on the founding board of the
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). In 1969, Deloria
published his most well-known book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An
Indian Manifesto, considered one of the most prominent works
written on American Indian affairs. The book was published just prior to the
takeover of Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973 by members and
supporters of the American Indian
Movement (AIM). By articulating the basis for American Indian
protest movements that were mobilizing across the United States and Canada
during that time, the book helped bring national attention to Native
American issues. Throughout his career, Deloria was critical of the
discipline of anthropology due to what he saw as the field’s
paternalistic approach to Native American culture and traditions.
Deloria published several books on the topics of law, education, philosophy, and
religion, including: The Red Man in the New World Drama
(1971), God Is Red (1973), American Indians,
American Justice (1983), The Nations Within
(1984), American Indian Policy In The Twentieth Century
(1985), Red Earth, White Lies (1995), and
Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths (2002).
Deloria received numerous accolades and awards throughout his lifetime and
posthumously, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native
Writers' Circle of the Americas, the Wallace Stegner Award from the
University of Colorado's Center for the American West, and an induction into
the National Native American Hall of Fame. He was named "one of the 11 great
religious thinkers of the twentieth century" by Time
magazine.
See T. Biolsi and L. J. Zimmerman, eds., Indians and Anthropologists:
Vine Deloria, Jr., and the Critique of Anthropology (1997); D.
M. Cobb, Native Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for
Sovereignty (2008); D. E. Wilkins, Red Prophet: The
Punishing Intellectualism of Vine Deloria, Jr. (2018); D.
Martínez, Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the
Birth of the Red Power Movement (2019); K. Jarratt-Snider and
M. O. Nielsen, eds., Indigenous Environmental Justice
(2020).
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