Excellent source for the Native American viewpoint

books:


	• Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Civilization of the American Indian) Vine Deloria University of Oklahoma Press, 1988 - 278 pages average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Insightful, funny . . . and frustrating

This has become a period piece, as both Indians and the rest of North America have changed a lot since this was written in 1970. Though the foreword to the new edition updates it somewhat, significant chunks of the book still come across as quite dated. For example, it was clearly written during the civil rights movement, which shapes many of the issues Deloria discusses.

Still, many of his points remain timeless. Deloria is very good at pointing out how many whites patronize Native Americans while believing that they are honoring them. For example, many whites like to claim that they had an Indian ancestor - - almost always a woman, often a great grandmother, and usually Cherokee. (Funny how whites don't make such claims about slave ancestors.) These claims are rarely documented, and rarely true. Many whites like to take on a cloak of Indian mysticism, as we see in many New Age practices. This has little to do with real Native Americans, real Indian religious practices, or real people's lives. Third, Deloria launches a devastating bromide against sociologists, and by implication other social scientists, who descend on reservations to pursue their own professional ambitions without giving anything back to their subjects.

Despite making a lot of similar valuable points, the book does not make any real argument. Each chapter is a bunch of ideas, anecdotes, and observations, all strung together. There's considerable inconsistency: on one page, Deloria praises a tribe for getting funding from five different agencies to build some housing, while two pages later he says that Indians just want to be left alone. Being left alone would probably not mean depending on funding from federal agencies.

Deloria eagerly criticizes stereotypes but has more than a few stereotypes of his own. He treats all whites as if they were alike, while he treats blacks as if they were all like one another but different than all whites. Latinos exist only as Mexicans, who are treated as all alike. All anthropologists and all Christian pastors or priests are also alike. Obviously, none of these groups are homogenous, and it does not further Deloria's ultimate project to treat them this way.

Obviously, I've been pretty critical so far in this review. Yet there's a reason why people valued the late Deloria so highly. He's often very insightful and makes many great points, even if his overall argument cannot sustain close scrutiny. He's also funny, and uses humor very effectively to make his points. My high-schooler and middle-schooler each laughed out loud - - independently - - when they saw this book in my possession, and it sparked some good conversations. The whole book is like that, and would be great for a reading group.

I'll finish this review with a question: who is in the position to write a new "Indian manifesto" today? So much of the writing by and for Native Americans today comes out of the humanities and is concerned with "discourses." Deloria, and those he worked with, cared about concrete outcomes - - material accomplishments. Even when he talks about stereotypes, he's less concerned with a racist discourse in itself than thinking about how to get past the stereotypes and help Native peoples. The 1960s and the 1970s were the years of the lawyer and the sociologist, and we now live in the years of the English professor. Are Indians better off for it?

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Excellent source for the Native American viewpoint

Despite the authors name, he has Indian ancestry, as do many contemporary author's do today. Non-Indians expect to see traditional names like Sitting Bull as writers. Due to many reasons, the first Americans have changed names or had them changed for them over a long period of time; a sad fact in itself. This book, as you might guess from the title, is often blunt, sometimes in your face. But it is also many other things. Vine is capable of cynicism, satire, tongue-in-cheek, brutal truth and laugh out loud funny. He is actually fairly adept at punctuating the tragic truth with a lighthearted moment to relieve the tension. Don't let that last statement put you off if you are not already aware that the people who lived in "America" before 1492 suffered mightily from European colonialism.The atrocities committed by both sides were horrendous. Vine Deloria examines the past and present to paint a picture of Indian life today, the problems they face, and the struggle these human beings endure today to recover from catastrophe and regain their history and culture.

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Many Wrongs Don't Make a Right

Vine Deloria's work is very important because he publicizes the concerns of Indians in the modern world. The stereotypical warriors on the plains or peace pipe-smoking chiefs have as much in common with modern Native Americans as powdered wigs and pantaloons have with modern White Americans. Deloria also convincingly contends that it's now useless to dwell on old evils of conquest and colonialism, and we should instead focus on the real problems faced by Indians in the present, especially poverty and ineffective government programs, and even insulting know-it-all anthropologists. After so many centuries of struggle, modern Indians deserve to be heard through a hard-hitting and knowledgeable statesman who holds no punches and tells it like it is. That's why Deloria's writings are so crucial. Unfortunately, his initially strong philosophy breaks down in the details, due to a writing style that is heavily dependent on hyperbole and generalization.

Deloria rightfully contends that such errors are at the root of misunderstandings about Indians, and racism in general. But he does the exact same thing when analyzing White culture, society, and religion, revealing his own lack of understanding about the people who he (accurately) accuses of a lack of understanding. One example among many here is "He [the White man] arbitrarily conceptualizes all things and understands none of them." This review forum does not allow me to list out extensive direct quotations, but the alert reader will find nearly continuous examples of this type of generalization about another culture, amidst Deloria's complaints about the same being done toward his culture. Another issue is that Deloria often reminds us that Indians are astonishingly diverse in their opinions and outlooks on modern issues. This could not possibly be untrue by any stretch of the imagination, though when Deloria starts arguing against White conceptions, he can?t (or won't) avoid lumping Indians back together with blanket statements like "There is usually not the slightest difference in what the tribes want for the future."

I'm not presumptuous enough to state that this type of writing should be condemned as reverse discrimination, or praised as fighting fire with fire. More opinionated people than me can decide such things for themselves. But when a writer can't stop doing what he accuses his opponents of doing, his arguments are sapped of credibility and believability. This is unfortunate because Deloria's basic contentions are crucially important both for his people and for the betterment of America's multicultural realities. [~doomsdayer520~]

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Custer DID die for your sins

It's probably impossible to say anything about this book that Indians will not agree with and most non-Indians will not understand. You've got to be a part of the world Deloria describes to understand the humiliation and insults Indian people, especially on Reservations, face daily. Let me give you one example: How many of you don't own the land your house sits on? Ask a Reservation Indian and you will find that many, if not most, have "houses" sitting on "federal" land.

Deloria just scratched the surface. A talk show host correctly gets fired for using a racial slur involving black women. A university donor is hunted and scorned (gee, righteous anger is so swell) for using a horrible term. Each day, though, the Braves play ball as the Redskins get ready for their season, and schools across the nation call themselves racial names-or paint themselves up (remember "blackface" - can't do that anymore) to be an Indian. For shame. Too bad Deloria didn't write more books like this one.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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