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Journal of Social Archaeology

ARTICLE

Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)

ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 4(2): 131146 DOI: 10.1177/1469605304041072

Planting seeds of ideas and raising doubts

about what we believe
An interview with Vine Deloria, Jr
JENNIFER NEZ DENETDALE
Department of History, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA

n the Spring of 2003, Vine Deloria, Jr delivered a presentation at the

School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Deloria, a distinguished Native intellectual and scholar, shared his research which involved
collecting Native North American origin stories, including those with
elements of Native peoples cosmologies and oral histories and comparing
them with the continents geological record. Such an approach not only validates and reclaims tribal insights about their relationship to the natural
world, but challenges parts of standard evolutionary theory and its
chronologies. Perhaps predictably, some members of the audience
responded with skepticism and outright disbelief when Professor Deloria
asserted that Native peoples oral traditions fit well with Western scholars
history of the earths geological changes. His frontal assault on the conceptual structure by which the system of Eurocentric global dominance has
come to be rationalized, justified and made to seem inevitable, has been
made across disciplines that include anthropology, archaeology, religion,
history and literature. In particular, Native scholars owe a debt to Vine
Deloria, Jr for opening the doors of academia to Native voices. The questions that guided this interview have been informed by the current issues
that Native communities and scholars face, including those about the nature

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of research on Native peoples and the questions of ethics and responsibility;

the political implications of conducting research on Native peoples; Native
scholars responsibilities to their Native communities and the nature of
collaborative research.
This interview was conducted on 28 March 2003 at the School of
American Research. We thank SAR President Richard Leventhal for his
support in bringing Professor Deloria to Santa Fe.
JND:

I am thinking about last nights talk, our conversation and my

understanding of your work from the past 20 years. The questions
I have focus on two major lines of thought that I see in your
scholarship. First, your work has made people sensitive to the idea
of representation, that knowledge is not objective and apolitical.
And second, you pose questions like how do we, as Native peoples,
reclaim Native knowledge and traditions to create a better world
for the coming generations.
In your talk, you mentioned your recent search for tall and little
people and giants who may have peopled the New World. One
audience response I noted was skepticism. You then also noted that
you presented the possibility for the existence of such people, not
because you want the audience to believe you or that you believe
it, but that we should consider these possibilities. Would you
elaborate on the significance of your investigations? How might
your investigations change the way we understand the history of
the Americas?

VDJ:

In the present world history and the present North American

history, there is a very homogenized generalized thing. It does not
include very many facts, actually, so its more of an ongoing
mythology. Consequently, when you come across some unusual
fact, an archaeological investigation or historical discovery, people
just cant stand aside as if it has no bearing on anything. I noticed
that some years back. The Doheny expedition in 1924 found all
these petroglyphs and these were all top scientists of the day. And
they reported this fact and the profession as a whole said, No, no,
no, this cant be dinosaurs. This cant be dinosaurs. Now, what you
are looking at there with the petroglyphs is a fact. They went down
the Grand Canyon and found this stuff. But the fact is overwhelmed by the dogma and doctrine that dinosaurs were far
removed from human beings. So the only thing you can say is,
Well, was this person who chipped that figure into the rock very
prophetic and its merely a happy coincidence that he made that
petroglyph that today resembles what we know as a dinosaur?
So I got interested in why things were always covered over when
they didnt fit into the orthodox paradigm. So, growing up on the

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reservation, we were getting reports of strange things happening

and meeting people who were doing healings and prophecies,
locating lost bodies and all manner of things we knew were a fact
of human life. But then you have to go into this sterile scientific
structure that says that those things cant happen. I had to believe
in one or the other. So I went with my experience, rather than what
I was taught to believe.
Going back to the first two questions you asked. Im not antiscientific although I write in that style. What Im trying to push is
that to be truly scientific means you have to be empirical; you have
to have data and facts to support your beliefs. Here, I presented
the possibility of locating 500 different items ranging from
university discoveries and excavations clear down to the local
farmer digging up a mound.
Now I consider those facts. They are reports. But what I got last
night in response was Oh no, no, no. Weve got to see a body. We
cant believe in any of this. But people in science believe in all
kinds of things they cant see. Quantum physics is simply mathematics. Much of astronomy today is mathematics. We dont point
telescopes at the sky anymore. We point instruments that can
measure things. Punch out numbers and you know from the
numbers what youve seen. So, its hard for people to break away
from what they have been taught to believe and to open their minds
and say, Well, maybe this is possible. If we get enough data on a
certain topic, whatever the topic, then you ought to take it seriously and investigate it. Where Ive investigated, the tracks lead
right up to the museum door. And they say, No, we didnt do this.
Then you say, Wait a minute. Whats going on here?
JND:

That is one of the major thoughts I take away from your work, that
is to consider the possibilities and look seriously at how our way
of thinking is so entrenched in Western thought when there is not,
in some cases, a basis for it.

VDJ:

One of the current theories on Noahs flood is that this asteroid

made an impact off Antarctica and created a massive tidal wave
coming up the Tigris Euphrates valley. I found a story from one of
the Navajo sources that seemed to fit in with the theory. They said
they could see the flood coming for three days. They could see it
way up in the sky, this wall of water. Well, that description fits
perfectly with that scenario. Then you have an example from some
tribes on the Pacific coast, who say the land originally was flat. They
didnt have the Cascade Mountains. Then this terrible catastrophe
came and the mountains rose up. So, you have to ask yourself what
happened and how did the mountain-building occur. Then you

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discover that, at one point, some geologist gave an estimate just off
the top of his head lets say 30 million years. Then you say, But,
thats not scientific. And then you look at what hes doing. Hes
trying to find a radioactive measuring device that will coincide with
the number that he picked out of the air. Well, you say to yourself:
thats not a fair measuring thing.
JND:

You also noted the possibility of migrations and travel to the New
World dating before Columbus appearance. Now, Native peoples
would say that such assertions undermine their claims as the
original inhabitants of this land. What do you have to say about
your outlook and what can be seen as counterclaims?

VDJ:

First, you have to accept the idea that North America has a very
complex history. You have to admit that all kinds of peoples
unquestionably have been here at one time or another. There is
too much evidence on this point. What Im trying to do is take the
period 2400 BC to about Columbus and try and determine what
kind of expeditions or explorers from other continents came here
and what they did. There is good evidence of Chinese exploration,
Phoenicians, Vikings and Celts. A number of those must have been
only one or two ships for explorations that probably went back to
Europe, or they just dissolved like some of the Spanish expeditions.
In the Southeast, they just came apart and you had survivors and
most of them died. Now, this doesnt interfere with the various
Indian claims. Ive said nothing about the Indians and in fact many
tribes have stories of strange people crossing their lands. In fact, if
you go back to the giants, there is a Choctaw story of how they
originated the blowgun the poison darts during a war with the
giants. Its a very realistic story and if you, on the one hand, are
finding in various mounds, cutting through hills for roads, finding
giant bones and then you find in Indians stories references to these
creatures, then you have to pose a question: are these bones and
these stories something that connects? Then you start to build a
body of knowledge.
Were Indians already here and being visited by these other
people? One Chinese story says that they landed around Los
Angeles and they marched inland. They came to the Grand
Canyon and they said: Wow, this is the canyon where the sun was
created. They met the Hopis and they gave a good description of
the Hopis. So, Im not saying Hopis came after the Chinese. Im
saying Hopis were already there when the Chinese came.
You can also go back into the Pleistocene era with the big
animals. You look around and check out various tribal stories.
Almost universally, tribal stories say there were great big animals

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here at one time. The buffalo was twice as big as he is now. And
dogface bear was a great big predator on the plains. Mammoths
and mastodons thrived. And the Indians say the animals were very
mean to us and abused us. We prayed to the Great Spirit. Then
came this big catastrophe when the Great Spirit destroyed them
all. Some of them got downsized. They dont say, downsized, they
say they were shrunk in size. I talked with Bill Tall Bull and he told
me of Cheyenne memories before the Ice Age when people and
animals were larger. These things fit together.
There is a book, America: New World or Old? by Werner
Muller. It argues that the Sioux, the Salish and the Algonqians used
to live up north in Canada when the planet had better weather.
They were forced to migrate south because of a radical change in
the climate. If you put these in the context of this newly developing scenario of our history, they make sense. Asteroids kill off life,
but something always seems to survive and so you have these
memories coming down. I havent done any research on this yet
but Im thinking about going into Southwest stories on monsters
because I think theyre talking about dinosaurs. So, what you want
to do is, put together the best possible scenario to explain these
things. Then you say, Well, this body of knowledge can be
discarded or enhanced, one or the other, by further research.
Anglos are so used to some authority figure, telling them what to
think. Or they will try to tell someone else what to think. If you
pose an open question and consider all the alternatives, thats
scientific. Just say lets hold all of this in suspension and if we need
to refer to it then well bring it forward and reconsider it. People
cant understand how to think constructively. It is very difficult. I
was surprised at the skepticism last night. I was just presenting
bodies of knowledge and saying, Look, people are working on
these. At a certain point, the body of evidence is going to be overwhelming and were going to have to make way and include it.
Now, you look at tribal creation stories and get into very
complex cosmologies and you can roughly divide things according
to a way a lot of tribes have, that current tribes are a mixture of
people who were created here and people came here from other
stars or other planets. The Sioux cosmology remembers back when
there was a star in the middle of the Big Dipper and it disappeared.
Some scientists speculate that there is a black hole where the Sioux
say there was a star. So what Im saying is that fragments of knowledge of a far distant past are present in a lot of tribal traditions and
the people themselves. They dont realize it because they are not
connected to this new thought, or dont think there is a connection.
So, when you begin to point these things out, a lot of this stuff starts

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to come together. You begin to see tribal history in a new setting.

I think, if you got a lot of this together, then you could ask medicine
men to do ceremonies, ask the spirits and check out the validity of
it. Is this true? Is this not true? There are very intriguing things
that tribal people remember, that dont make sense at the present
time. But weve got to be willing to say that the earth was much
different at another time. It wasnt the way we look at it now. The
landscape testifies to that, there is evidence there. The mountains
have come up and people have remembered it. The lakes have
formed. Im trying to develop little clusters of things that were
probable and to get tribes to say, Hey, this relates to this . . .
JND:

We have similar kinds of stories. The one people are most familiar
with is the one that takes place near Grants, New Mexico. Monster
Slayer killed a monster there, a giant, and so when you drive across
the lava its actually the monsters dried blood. I understand what
you are talking about. In several of your works you note that a
central question has been whether Indians should be allowed to
present their side of the story, or will helpful and knowing whites
be the Indians spokespeople? And that battle has taken up half
of your adult life. To what extent have we been able to represent
ourselves?

VDJ:

Well, its much, much better than it ever was. When I came into
the field, there was a big gathering of missionaries at Estes Park
every Fourth of July. There were about 700 whites and 30 Indians.
It was all the mission fields. White person after white person got
up and said what should happen to Indians. We are going to make
the policy. We need to tell the government this and that. That
attitude had existed for a century. They were doing that when
Grant was president the Peace Policy. And so Cecil Corbett,
Sidney Byrd, myself and some others, the second time we had to
go to that, we said we were going to get up and raise hell. So we
got up and said, We dont want to hear about conversion and all
that. The government is trying to do this, that and the other and
we want you to support us. We finally took that thing over. And
the result of it was that a lot of the white missionaries got mad and
wouldnt come. They didnt want to listen to Indians. It finally
dissolved. They dont do that anymore.
But then, I looked around and there was much work to do.
Anthropologists were still giving testimony in court cases, instead
of Indians. So, a number of us went in swinging and youd be
surprised at the attitude. In the mid-1970s, a group tried to start a
human relations council in the Southwest, in Texas, Oklahoma,
Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California. Some of us were

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invited to attend the organizing meeting. They had the board

divided into blacks, Chicanos and whites. I said, Where are the
Indians? Well, the Indians are not ready for this yet and so we are
going to have a project, an Indian advisory committee. I said, Oh
no, Indians are going to get one fourth of the board meeting. Then
they said, Then we have to give Asians something. And I said,
Well then, lets give Asians something. Why do you think we
cant handle this? Were running poverty programs with millions
of dollars a year. Putting complex legislation through Congress.
This was just prior to Wounded Knee [1973]. And we finally forced
Indian board membership and tried to get the organization going.
Again, the whites got mad and left. So, what you learned was that
these people dont give up their status very easily. They werent
graceful people at all. That is not true anymore. Indians can form
their own organizations. They can participate in a lot of advisory
councils and organizations as equals. No one would dare say,
Indians arent smart enough. Well make them a project. I think
there has been a lot of progress made.
JND:

Your scathing criticism of anthropological and archaeological practices, perhaps best known from Custer Died for Your Sins, has
brought about a subfield, where scholars are now publishing papers
about ideal collaborative relationships between researchers (most
of whom remain non-Native) and Native communities and Native
researchers and communities are insisting upon research ethics that
include responsibility to Native communities, research that is
useful and valid for Native peoples, among others. Considering
your experiences and knowledge of various disciplines, do you
think that much has changed in the way research is conducted on
and about Native peoples?

VDJ:

There have been a lot of positive changes. When I came into the
field, there was a uniform belief that any anthropologist could
know more about Indian tribes than the Indians. They never questioned that. We started questioning that very early and they started
to back off. There was a big split in anthropology. They wont admit
it, but suddenly we had some anthropologist allies and we had some
bitter enemies. I knew there was something going on inside anthropology. They got the ethics set up, but often, they carry the ethics
thing too far. You cant go and talk to people without this elaborate process. Once you give them a form to fill out, theyll fill out
the form but theyll do the same thing they used to, taking pictures
and talking to elders. Fill out the form and then go and talk to some
people. The people they talk to become objects of investigation
again. It is not really collaborative. But Indians have to keep the

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pressure on. You cant let these people go wandering around your
Pueblo. They had this big flap over this guy who did this book at
Hopi.
JND:

Was it Thomas Mails?

VDJ:

This was before Mails. I dont remember his name, but he was a
well-known anthropologist. Been out there eight years and finally
published this book the Hopis didnt like. Nancy Wood published
a book on Taos and the Taos people didnt like it. I did the introduction to it. And she is really not a scholar and repeated things
that had been said in confidence and some people at Taos raised
hell with me. And I said, Look, you let her wander around your
Pueblo for years and she regarded that as an invitation to learn
and write about you. Same with the anthropologist at Hopi. I
think Indians really have to be vigilant. They ought to have their
own forms for people to fill out. But when you get to Indian
scholars studying Indians, I think there ought to be a completely
different format. You ought to go in and talk to the tribal council
and the traditional elders and become part of that community
during your research. Make certain that theres always someone
who the tribe can point to and say, Shes repeated faithfully what
we told her to write down. A lot of that has to change. We still
need to put up a big fight in the social sciences to get Indian
scholars in professional meetings, because often, two or three
anthropologists will bring their Indian graduate students and say,
Indians are represented.

JND:

One of the things that I noticed and shared with other Native
scholars is that Native scholars have contributed by personalizing
the methodology. For example, when I took oral histories in my own
community with the descendants of Manuelito and Juanita, what
happened was that it turned into storytelling sessions. It wasnt a
question/answer interview, but my grandpa was there. My grandmother was there. My mother was there. So, its storytelling that
goes on. Thats one of the differences in research methods I noted.

VDJ:

I ran into problems in Colorado. We started holding conferences

about traditional knowledge and someone at the university said,
You have to get permission to do all this. And I said, Come on
now. This is not doing research. These are my personal friends.
Am I going to say to Albert Whitehat, Can you sign a paper so I
can talk to you? I said, You have to understand, we are composed
of a community looking for traditional knowledge. We represent
all tribes and run things more democratically than anything on this
campus. Were not going to sign this. So they backed off.

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JND:

The Navajo Nation is starting to deal with these issues. There are
tons of researchers out there. I think the Navajo Nation has been
one of the most receptive to researchers and I see that changing.
The writing of Indian cultures by non-Indians has played an
important political role in legitimizing, perpetuating and sustaining
imperialist attitudes toward Native peoples. Yet, in a recent Indian
Country Today, you stated that Native scholars needed to write
non-fiction. Of fiction writers you say that its easier to write about
emotions and that weve had years of that. Would you speak to
the place of the arts, including fiction, as a form of resistance?

VDJ:

I think Ive been kind of disappointed that so many Indian writers

either do poetry or write novels and short stories. I realize that
personal choice fits in well with a certain portion of American
society and they try to do that. On the other hand, in non-fiction,
you get books that really are fiction. There is this book on the West,
by Elliot West of Arkansas and in it he says Indians are responsible for the extinction of the bison. He says: The settlers did kill
some buffalo, but we wont count them. And the buffalo hunters
did kill some, but we wont count them. Then he comes up with
this ridiculous scenario that the Cheyennes eliminated the buffalo
when they wintered in the Big Timbers, which was a 12-mile strip,
an island in Arkansas River. Thats where some bands wintered
because they could water their horses and the horses could eat the
cottonwood bark. This guy says that the buffalo used to come down
to the Big Timbers and winter there also. But when the Indians
were there, the buffalo couldnt come and the buffalo birthrate fell
and they became extinct. This is totally stupid. Where are the
Indian writers who can come into this non-fiction field and say,
What is this nonsense?.
There is Dan Flores up in Montana. He says the only way to
estimate how many buffalo there were is to take the number of
animals in this area in 19001910 and figure out how many animals
the land could support. He used figures for fenced stock and then
argued that the buffalo herd was that size. This is overlooking
historical observations. A cavalry troop in eastern Kansas in the
1860s was authorized to go to a place some 30 miles away. They
went over the first hill from the fort and there was a buffalo herd
stretching to the horizon. They were inside that buffalo herd until
they got to the next fort. It was a buffalo herd 3040 miles wide.
Lord knows how many buffalo. So the idea that Indians killing a
few buffalo caused the herd to go extinct is impossible. At the same
time, when the buffalo hunters came in, they took three or four
million hides a year and wiped the buffalo out.

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So my statement here is simply: Jump in here and get into the

mix. Start writing rebuttals. We need a truth squad running around
in academia. Totally absurd, this idea that Indians came down and
cleaned out all of the big game. Written by a man who has no idea
how animals live, how hunters hunt. They say a hundred Indians
came down from the north and killed a mammoth a week each and
as they marched south they left no animals behind them. Thats
stupid. Animals have rhythms and rotations. You could kill a whole
bunch this summer and theyd just sneak around and go back up
north or back west or away from the direction you were. If you
could clear an area of animals, American white hunters would have
done this with the deer 200 years ago. Those animals arent bound
to be in an area. Now, hundreds of Indian scholars out of their own
personal knowledge could easily refute all of that. But there are no
Indians there saying, Wait a minute . . . Thats what I was talking
about. You get a generation that just wants to express their feelings
as individuals, then what happens to the community? You have
people saying, We have to restrict Indian hunting and fishing
because they killed off all the animals. They cant be trusted. A
lot of what happens to us is political. We need political writers to
respond.
JND:

One of the longstanding facts about Navajos is that we came down

from Canada into the Southwest with virtually no culture. Anthropologists note that Navajos have a complex language that is classified as Athabaskan, but that we came into the Southwest with very
little culturally. Everything we have has been borrowed from
Pueblos or Spaniards or the Americans. Its a blank slate theory
that is not applied to any other tribal peoples. We literally had to,
according to the literature, wear high-heels so our knuckles
wouldnt drag.

VDJ:

Ive always thought that was tremendously unfair.

JND: In several of your works, you have articulated changes that must
be made for successful Indian nations, including structural reform,
cultural renewal, economic stability and stable relations between
Indian nations, states and the federal government. Recently,
women scholars have been raising questions about how nations,
formulated on Western patriarchal values, recreate and perpetuate
inequalities between men and women. What are your thoughts on
these sorts of analyses?
VDJ:

If you look at all the Indian nations, they either had clans or kinship
organizations that kept the nation together prevented domestic conflict. Clan/kinship really governed the way they acted

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economically. Women were primary actors in both kinship and

clan. Along come the European governments, European explorers. And they are like the anthropologists of today who are looking
for people like themselves and who can deal with people only on
terms that they understand. You come to treaties, which in Europe
is a temporary agreement to stop fighting. When they deal with
Indians, they want to talk to one head chief because theyve got a
king over in Europe and expect to find one here. They dont understand how you can have a council of people without any leader
telling them what to do. They dont understand clan at all because
you have to see that in the actions of people, toward each other,
toward relatives and strangers. You have to understand adoption.
Many tribes, when they lost a family member, theyd adopt
someone from another tribe, whereas Europeans created orphans
and put them in an institution.
The whole thing got terribly overbalanced. When I say return
to new structural reform, new cultural reform, Ive really been
thinking a long time about taking kinship and clan responsibilities
seriously. Bat Pourier, at Pine Ridge, has set up a family gas station.
He is employing all the relatives, like the old family ways. I think
thats the way to go. Its about the only successful small business
up there. If you can get people to organize, we call it tiospaye, all
the immediate blood relatives work together.
The Menominees successfully ran their timber operation using
traditional practices. They invented sustained harvest in timber
practice. In the northwest they have longhouses family units. So
today we have to go back to that and look at politics and economics and even education, as functioning best in large family units.
And you can do that with day schools, but now that you have those
big consolidated schools on reservations, all the teachers can do is
keep the kids from getting in trouble. They really cant teach them
anything. Indians took care of themselves really well for a hundred
thousand years. And then in the last hundred years, the kids were
separated from the rest of the family. Even white kids. Thats why
they have so many problems. Theyre separated from the family,
from elders. The elders have no responsibility to the young ones.
If you go to any tribe and find out how they handle crisis, you go
right down the age groups, each one looking out for the other.
Attack a Sioux camp and they could be ready to fight you in five
minutes. The older children would grab the younger ones, get on
a horse and disappear. The women would gather up the babies.
Warriors went out to fight. Everybody had a role in society. Everybody knew what to do. And you can see that in a lot of tribes. They
each had different responses, but they were very well organized.

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There were no orphans. There really were no unattached people

without relatives. So, a society that is that well connected can
respond to anything. I think some industries on tribal land should
be run to provide employment, not profit. Its far better to have
people doing things like that. Thats really what the war on poverty
tried to do. You got extra money. A number of tribes had ranger
programs doing conservation work. All these unemployed people
came off the dole, beautifying and establishing parks. That was
very effective. Thats what the federal government was doing
during the Depression. Everything worked.
JND:

I think Native women scholars have said the same thing; we need
to recreate community ties.

VDJ:

You need some impetus to get over that transition and you have
to know Indians. I was very successful, when I was running the
NCAI (National Congress of American Indians), at winning the
elections. All kinds of people tried to knock me out of that
directors position. The way I won was based on knowing how
people acted. When we entered the convention, I knew who the
influential women were from the different tribes. I took them for
coffee and spent some time listening to them. I spent all the time
with them. Id win support of the tribe through the women. One
time, Cato Valandra was going to double-cross us. He wouldnt
nominate Wendell for President. Hed made deals with somebody
else. Alvina Graybear and Eunice Larrabee were sitting there
watching him. Finally, Alvina slammed her pocketbook down.
Cato, you get up there and nominate Wendell. Or when we get
back . . .. He jumped out of that chair and Eunice was waving her
finger at him, you wont be able to appear in South Dakota! Once,
when I was visiting San Carlos, we were discussing legislation and
four Apache women came and sat in the back of the room. Those
guys really shaped up quick.

JND:

Sometimes I go to chapter meetings where the women are really

vocal. They talk and they argue and they interrupt. But when you
get to the tribal council, where its men, you see a different
dynamic. For the past week I have been consumed by world events.
Its something a lot of us are thinking about: the US invasion of
Iraq, growing anti-American sentiment in the world, the number
of Native men and women in the military. In several of your works,
including God is Red: A Native View of Religion, you discuss how
Christianity continues to influence and shape Western history, philosophy, social sciences and the sciences. As I watch the news
coverage of the war with Iraq, its impossible to miss the constant

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references to God. A recent Newsweek or Time cover depicts

George Bush with head bowed in prayer. Our government declares
that God is on our side. It seems that Americans are turning to
their churches as a way to cope with this war. The Pope has
expressed anti-war sentiments. What are your thoughts on the
references to Christianity in this present war?
VDJ:

Its always been an imperial religion. Its always been extremely

aggressive. Its always been very stubborn and intolerant. Were
right and no one else is. Using Christianity as a justification for
attacking a nation is a well-known phenomenon. Its very sad
because people claiming to be Christian do not act in accordance
with their beliefs. When they cite the Bible they usually are citing
only the Old Testament, which is not really Christian, but Jewish.
Its not unexpected that they are going to say this war is all right.
The louder they shout that Gods on our side, the less justification we actually have for doing these things. You didnt hear this
during the Second World War. It was minimal. We had an identifiable enemy, Japan, and everybody assumed God was on our side.
The leaders didnt keep bashing you over the head with it. You
turn on the TV today and God is doing this, that and the other.
But if you go back to the Old Testament, Vengeance is mine saith
the Lord. Even if you take the worse of the Old Testament, it
doesnt justify killing your enemies. There is this other admonition, dont do this on the basis of revenge. Its a major catastrophe
for humankind.

JND:

Native men have a long history of serving in the US military. In the

First World War more than 12,000 Native people served, even
though we were not US citizens. In the Vietnam War, over 50,000
served and 90 percent were volunteers. In this war, there are thousands of Native men and women who have been deployed and on
the Navajo Nation it was reported that rallies in support of our
troops were being held. Given our history with the USA, one of
broken treaties and dispossession, how does it happen that as
Native peoples we continue to display a loyalty and patriotism to
the USA, when it seems like such a contradiction? Ive heard other
Native people express this as well.

VDJ:

It certainly goes very deep; its almost hazardous to try and explain
it. You take the First World War, a lot of Sioux volunteered. It was
only 20 years after Wounded Knee, so that was unique. I think
among Indians theres always been a very benign, very humane
expectation that there will be justice. Were always so trusting of
everybody. Put in this context: someone has attacked the USA

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we volunteer. And after the war we want just treatment for

ourselves so that we dont have to fight tooth and nail for it. We
are always willing to go one more mile than the Christian. We are
more Christian than the Christians. And when we ask for justice
or the simple fulfillment of legal obligations, then we realize once
again that these people cant be trusted. Its up and down. People
support the USA with the hope that they are creating better lives.
It never happens.
JND:

Ive noticed references to the Indian wars in present military

rhetoric. The Seventh Cavalry has several divisions named Crazy
Horse and Apache. Military hardware has names like the
Apache helicopter and the Black Hawk missile. A recent New
York Times article relates that the Seventh Cavalrys history is
replete with tales that hint at the heroism, mishap and tragedy that
go hand in hand in war. What is significant about Americas
continual recalling of its past history, the Indian wars, with Native
peoples?

VDJ:

We are still regarded as a very strange people, just not a part of

America. The Seventh Cavalry wasnt all that heroic. They were
led by a moron and lot of soldiers panicked during the battle. Yet,
this is the great myth that America cherishes. Theyre always right.
They are always the smartest. But to achieve that status they have
to borrow from Indians. There are no real distinguished people.
You hear references to Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, but
those are historical people. They dont have that special aura so
they use Indian names and it evokes all the positive militaristic
Indian traits. It assumes a religious power. Say Geronimo! when
you jump out of a plane. It gives the white guys added courage, by
borrowing from our warrior tradition. America has won a lot of
wars by simply overwhelming their opponents. Thats not being
heroic. Thats how they beat Germany. They were able to produce
so much material, they simply out-produced them. Look at Iraq
and the use of every possible weapon in the world against them.
Thats not heroic.

JND:

I guess its the creation of a past because America has such a short
past. Its only 200 years old, so they have to create this glorious
past.
What and who have been major influences in your career as a
scholar and Native activist?

VDJ:

A lot of people. A lot of books. A lot of my career was because I

took things at face value; I was very nave. I thought you could do
things. In retrospect, if I hadnt thought I couldnt have done them,

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I probably wouldnt have done them. So, my being stupid has been
a big help. When I read an article, I really get involved in the issue,
because I know that I dont know it. But along the way, Ive
met both elders and people my own age who have been very
helpful to me. And it always got me back on the ground with all
kinds of ideas. Some of the elders are standing up a whole generation. And then an occasional Indian maverick stands up for something.
JND:

Can you name them?

VDJ:

Billy Frank, in Mesquakie, who was responsible for the fishing

rights. Bill Tall Bull, Cheyenne medicine man. Frank Ducheneaux,
who was a longtime chairman at Cheyenne River. Norbert Hale,
Sr, who use to be chairman at Oneida. And there was a BIA man,
Graham Holmes, who helped me understand Washington politics.
He was part Choctaw. Ive been lucky that when I needed
guidance, the right people have been around. Sometimes you feel
like you are lost, get discouraged. You go back to who you think
your friends are. Maybe you make one or two new friends doing
that and you come back out of it. Nothing is straightforward and
easy, so I think over the years different people have given me
different insights and more opportunities to do something.

JND:

You have been a major force that has influenced and shaped a
generation of academics and a generation of Native peoples. What
do you hope to leave as your legacy?

VDJ:

If you look very seriously, almost all of my books are sketches. I

worked on each one of them for years, footnoting each one of
them, making them precise. What I wanted to do was create a birds
eye view on a topic. Ive written on religion, on oral tradition and
on politics. I hope that the next several generations will take some
of these, where there are one or two useful ideas in these books,
and take that idea and move forward with it. What I wanted was a
type of literature that almost anyone could pick up off the bookshelf, read through and get a reasonable idea of what the subject
was, the complexity of it and where it originated in the past. So, a
good legacy would be if people could take some of the contents of
these books and develop their own articulation of Native rights and
Indian culture. I really like seeing Greg (Cajete) and Dan
(Wildcat) taking the leadership. I wish there were ten times that
many people. It is discouraging, that you have to look for them. I
would like for them to be really visible.

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Acknowledgements
The title is taken from Vine Deloria Jrs essay, Thinking in Public: A Forum,
American Literary History 10(1) (1998). We would like to thank Lynn Meskell for
her interest in and support of this project.

VINE DELORIA, Jr, Standing Rock Sioux, is one of the foremost Native
American scholars today. The author of several seminal works, including
Custer Died For Your Sins, God is Red and Red Earth,White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, Deloria is a venerated Elder whose
vision for tribal peoples and sense of responsibility to the Native
community are emblematic. His most recent publication is Evolution,
Creationism, & Other Modern Myths: A Critical Inquiry.