Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement by David Martínez

Abstract

Reviewed by: Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement by David Martínez Gregory D. Smithers (bio) Life of the Indigenous Mind: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Birth of the Red Power Movement by David Martínez University of Nebraska Press, 2019 FOR MANY OF US working in the fields of Native American and Indigenous studies, the moment we first read Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins was transformative. I first read Deloria's 1969 classic as a teenager in the late 1980s. Reading Custer proved exhilarating; it sparked new insights and fresh questions. Deloria's style had me hooked. Anthropologists did not write like he did; historians certainly didn't. Since my teenage encounter with Custer, I've returned to Deloria's work regularly. Each time I learn something new. David Martínez's brilliant Life of the Indigenous Mind taught me even more about Deloria. Written in clear prose and thoroughly researched, Martínez organizes his analysis around Custer; We Talk, You Listen (1970); God Is Red (1973); and Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (1974)—four key books in Deloria's influential career. Over ten chapters, Martínez covers issues ranging from tribal self-determination to Indigenous epistemologies. Today, most humanists and social scientists incorporate these themes into their work as a matter of course. But when Deloria began writing about self-determination and Indigenous knowledge as vital to the well-being of Native people—first in his role as head of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and later in his books and essays—he blazed a trail that continues to provide intellectual and political clarity on issues that still resonate across Indian Country. Martínez explains that Deloria made no pretense to the phony objectivity that characterized white scholarship. He wrote as an Indigenous person, specifically as a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and directed his message to "us"—other Native Americans (5). As Martínez explains in chapter 1, Deloria urged Indigenous people to work from within to resist American colonialism by advocating for a tribal court system that would buttress the self-determination of Native nations. Indigenous self-determination, or what Deloria referred to as "tribalism," required bold leadership at the tribal level (65). As Martínez explains in chapters 2 and 3, this meant Indigenous [End Page 162] leaders needed to rise to the challenge of reconnecting communities to the land and throwing off the shackles of termination policy. Indeed, the United States government must fulfill its treaty obligations by recognizing the sovereignty of Indian nations and restoring the nation-to-nation relationship enshrined in hundreds of treaties. Deloria recognized that achieving this new political reality would require a radical shift in how Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) bureaucrats "managed" Indian affairs (105). It would also necessitate creative new thinking out of Indian Country. Overturning what Deloria called the "atrocity" of termination would not be easy (109). However, Martínez notes that Deloria was not alone in championing tribal government, with Indigenous leaders and writers like D'Arcy McNickle also devoting themselves to the cause of self-determination in the decades after World War II. As Martínez argues in chapters 5 and 6, Deloria understood that Indigenous self-determination meant changing how Native people saw themselves and how settlers saw Indigenous people. This is where Deloria offered what, for his time, were stunning insights about the importance of political and cultural self-determination. Native Americans were not individual "others," something that made liberal civil rights discourse ill-suited to Indigenous politics. By taking the term "tribalism" away from anthropologists, Indigenous people could begin to undo stereotypes imposed on them over centuries by Christian missionaries, anthropologists, and politicians. To do so, Deloria insisted that Native people must come together if they hoped to protect their own rights, advance the cause of sovereignty, and articulate their own stories. Martínez has produced a rich and rewarding book. He is balanced in his critiques of Deloria's writings and careful to contextualize Deloria's political motives for self-determination. For those hoping to read a biography of Deloria that...