23+ Vine Deloria Jr. Quotes On Education, Religion And Family

Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005) was a Native American author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was a prominent voice in the struggle for American Indian rights and sovereignty and wrote extensively on Native American history and culture. He is best known for his 1969 book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, which is widely credited with helping to spark the modern American Indian Movement. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Vine Deloria Jr. on education, religion, family.

Top 10 Vine Deloria Jr. Quotes

1. Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent.
2. The future of mankind lies waiting for those who will come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things.
3. Custer is said to have boasted that he could ride through the entire Sioux Nation with his Seventh Cavalry, and he was half right. He got half-way through.
4. When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours.
5. To be an Indian in modern American society is in a very real sense to be unreal and ahistorical.
6. This country was a lot better off when the Indians were running it.
7. These Indians are fierce, they wear feathers and grunt. Most of us dont fit this idealized figure since we grunt only when overeating
8. If you want to be sovereign, act sovereign.
9. But even labeling a site as astronomical is an improvement, since it partially sidesteps the old stereotype of Indians being primitive and ignorant savages.
10. For some unknown reason, this [antiabortion] branch of Christianity cherishes the unborn and hates the living person.

Vine Deloria Jr. Famous Quotes And Sayings

Every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people is to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others so that the lives they are leading make sense. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Before any final solution to American history can occur, a reconciliation must be effected between the spiritual owner of the land - American Indians - and the political owner of the land - American Whites. Guilt and accusations cannot continue to revolve in a vacuum without some effort at reaching a solution. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Not only did secular scientists rout the Christian fundamentalists, they placed themselves in the posture of knowing more, on the basis of their own very short-term investigations, than the collective remembrances of the rest of humankind. — Vine Deloria Jr.

The bottom line about the information possessed by non-Western peoples is that the information becomes valid only when offered by a white scholar recognized by the academic establishment; in effect, the color of the skin guarantees scientific objectivity. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Like almost everyone else in America, I grew up believing the myth of the objective scientist. Fortunately I was raised on the edges of two very distinct cultures, western European and American Indian. — Vine Deloria Jr.

If the tribal peoples actually represented Western origins at a much earlier time, it was exceedingly valuable that they should be studied intensely for clues about the nature and origin of human society. Consequently it was an injury to science and human knowledge to allow the military to simply exterminate them. — Vine Deloria Jr.

With the collision of the Shoemaker comet into Jupiter, the era of uniformitarian orthodoxy must come to an end. Minds that have been closed for nearly half a millennium can now be opened to see what really has happened to our planet in the past -- and that past is not as distant as we might suppose. — Vine Deloria Jr.

As time passed I became an avid reader of popular scientific books, wanting to know as much as I could about the world in which I lived. Gradually I began to see a pattern of nonsense in much scientific writing. Scientific explanations given regarding the origins or functioning of various phenomena simply didn't make sense. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Never has America lost a war ... But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict. Consider how quickly America seems to be facing its allies of one war as new enemies. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Culture, as Indian people understood it, was basically a lifestyle by which a people acted. It was self-expression, but not a conscious self-expression. Rather, it was an expression of the essence of a people. — Vine Deloria Jr.

It is this subtle dimension of understanding that marks the southwestern Indian peoples from other religions and separates tribal peoples from the world's religions. Somewhere in the planetary history religious expression changed from participation in the sound, color and rhythm of nature to the abstractions of man outside this context pleading for temporary respite and hoping in the next life to return to the Garden. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Do certain sets of circumstances lie ahead of us wherein we change the world radically by the choices we make? — Vine Deloria Jr.

Royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Life Lessons by Vine Deloria Jr.

1. Vine Deloria Jr. taught us to recognize and value the importance of Native American culture and history, and to recognize the need for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.
2. He also highlighted the need for Indigenous voices to be heard in the public sphere and for Indigenous perspectives to be included in the telling of American history.
3. Finally, he demonstrated the power of using literature to challenge mainstream narratives and to advocate for social justice and equality.