Word: deloria
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...Deloria is in a unique position to know. A young, tough and dedicated member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, he is, at 36, a former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and an aspirant lawyer. He is also a wittily perceptive writer, as he shows best in a provocative chapter devoted to "Indian Humor...
Indian history is notoriously full of broken covenants, callous horse soldiers and greedy land-grabbers-all encouraged from Washington. Though Vine Deloria dwells on such things with savage wit in this remarkable book, he is more bitterly concerned with the recent past and the havoc worked among the long-suffering tribes in the past 20 years by less officially baneful agencies-compassionate missionaries, humane anthropologists and liberal bureaucrats. Their doings, says Deloria, justifiably provoked a Sioux leader to tell a congressional hearing that what the Indians really want is "a leave-us-alone...
...from being wooden, Deloria says, Indians are wildly comic. He invokes two favorite subjects of Indian mirth. One is Custer, who was found wearing "an Arrow shirt," and the other is Columbus. Indians, watching his landing, groaned, "There goes the neighborhood." Deloria cites bumper-sticker slogans: "God is Red" and "We Shall Overrun." There are other contemporary jokes, like the one about a poll which disclosed that while only 15% of the Indians wanted U.S. forces to get out of Viet Nam, 85% wanted U.S. forces to get out of America. The source of Indian humor, Deloria makes clear...
Termination and Tribalism. The book ranges from the origins of scalping to differences between the new black and the old red nationalism. But Deloria really wants to talk about topics that few white Americans know anything about -termination and tribalism...
...classic example, in Deloria's view, is the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin. With large tax-exempt holdings, communal responsibility, a profitable sawmill and lumbering business, about 3,000 Menominees, before "termination" began in 1961, were nearly selfsupporting. They cost the Federal Government only about $50 per head in aid a year, a level far lower than in many white communities. Then the reservation was made into a regular Wisconsin county, tax exemptions were cut off, and Indians who occupied land were allowed to buy or rent it. In the eight years since termination, many have become dead weights...