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Indian Country: In memoriam Vine Deloria Jr.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
"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."
Get the Story:
Vine Deloria Jr. - In memoriam
(Indian Country Today 11/15)
Indian Country Today Articles from January 10, 2005:
Wilma
Mankiller: An original thinker with a warrior's spirit Suzan
Shown Harjo: Selective memories of Vine Deloria Jr.Faith
Spotted Eagle: Deksi (Uncle) Vine Charlie
Wilkins: Visionary thinker and wordsmith par excellenceHank
Adams: A Vine Deloria Jr. collaboration: The first decadeJohn
Mohawk: Vine Deloria Jr.'s unfolding legacy Philip
Deloria: Tales of a remarkable fatherNorbert
Hill: A hero to many
Related Stories:
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Jodi Rave: Deloria unknown because he's Indian
(01/24)
Vine Deloria is ICT's American
Indian Visionary (01/10)
Column: Vine
Deloria refuses honorary degree (05/25)
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