Vine Deloria, Jr.

"Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. Today with an information `superhighway' now looming on the horizon, we are told that a lack of access to information will doom people to a life of meaninglessness -- and poverty. As we look around and observe modern industrial society, however, there is no question that information, in and of itself, is useless and that as more data is generated, ethical and moral decisions are taking on a fantasy dimension in which a `lack of evidence to indict' is the moral equivalent of the good deed."

"In recent years we have come to understand what progress is. It is the total replacement of nature by an artificial technology. Progress is the absolute destruction of the real world in favor of a technology that creates a comfortable way of life for a few fortunately situated people. Within our lifetime the differences between the Indian use of the land and the white use of the land will become crystal clear. The Indian lived with his land. The white destroyed his land. he destroyed the planet earth."

"Scientists, and I use the word as loosely as possible, are committed to the view that Indians migrated to this country over an imaginary Bering Straits bridge, which comes and goes at the convenience of the scholar requiring it to complete his or her theory. Initially, at least, Indians are homogenous. But there are also eight major language familied within the Western Hemisphere, indicating to some scholars that if Indians followed the trend that can be identified in other continents, then the migration went from east to west; tourists along the Bering straits were going TO Asia, not migrating FROM it."

Vine Deloria, Jr., Standing Rock Sioux, 1970, 1994


2001

RAPID CITY, S.D. - Vine Deloria, who officially retired from his career as a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder in May (2000), isn't planning to stop working.
"I've given all of my papers to the Denver Public Library, so I need to get those in order," he said at a book signing at Prairie Edge here last month. From Indian Country Today, May 31, 2000

Vine Deloria, Jr. was named as one of the authors honored, Oct 12, 2002, at the 2002 National Book Festival.

Vine also received the Wallace Stegner award from the Center of the American West in Boulder Colorado on Oct 23, 2002. This annual award is named after one of the most influential writers in the modern West.

Vine Deloria Jr., a renowned author, historian, scholar, political scientist and activist, is the winner of the 2003 American Indian Festival of Words Author Award. Deloria will speak, answer questions and sign autographs at the award presentation on Saturday, March 1, 2003. From Canku Ota January 11, 2003

An August 2003 interview with Vine Deloria, Jr.about his book Evolution, Creationism, And Other Modern Myths by Front Range Living, a Colorado weekly online magazine.

Indigenous Peoples' Literature Return to Indigenous Peoples' Literature

Compiled by: Glenn Welker





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