Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to the oppression of Indigenous Americans. 

Vine Victor Deloria Jr. (1933-2005) was born in Martin, South Dakota, a small community near the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Deloria’s father was an Episcopal archdeacon, and as a child, Deloria attended the Kent School, an elite Connecticut boarding school affiliated with that church. He attended Iowa State University and graduated from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in 1963, planning to pursue the family tradition of ministry. Instead, he entered academia, teaching ethnic studies and religion at several colleges before accepting a tenured position in the political science department at the University of Arizona in 1978.

He was also a lifelong activist and community organizer. He held a board position for the National Museum of the American Indian beginning in 1977 when the organization was in its infancy. The museum is now part of the Smithsonian and houses Indigenous collections from across the country in two centrally located Washington, DC, locations. In 1964, Deloria became the director of the NCAI. He was very successful in this role, bringing the total number of enrolled tribes from 19 to 156 and majorly improving the organization’s finances.