Custer Died for Your Sins

It seems as if both historians and ethnographers are again concerning themselves with the diatribe of past events in relation to modern, more pragmatic, communicative efforts. In fact, many of the recent works tend to readdress some of the historical issues so prevalent in ethnographic research, and attempt to merge the varieties of fieldwork with an historical perspective presumably to reformat some of the issues in a newer, more modern, bent. Within this context, this paper will examine a 1969 work, Custer Died For Your Sins, by Vine DeLoria, Jr.

In brief terms, the book is less of an historical interpretation of the American Indian, for it would be difficult for any book to attempt such a feature in only one volume, than an extended essaylike commentary on the way the American Indian has been, and is, perceived under the constructs of modern culture. In fact, this perception is apparent right from the start of the work, when DeLoria comments that:

Indians are like the weather. Everyone knows all about the weather, but none can change it. When storms are predicted, the sun shines. When picnic weather is announced, the rain begins. Likewise, if you count on the unpredictability of Indian people, you will never be sorry (p. 1).

Thus, one is immediately aware that the variety of myth surrounding Indians is under attack. In fact, DeLoria seems to infer that it is precisely this mythologizing that is damaging to Indian culture, particularly in evidence wi

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e late 1870s. For the most part the people lived in log cabins and tents. Indian Affairs was regarded as merely a matter of administration and recordkeeping . . . [But] in the 1950s and early 1960s tribes had to spend all of their time defending their lands and treaty rights from the whims of the terminationists. Little was done to develop the reservations because all energies went into saving them from obliteration (p. 139). In terms of intercultural communications, then, the DeLoria material is literally filled with examples of the ways in which governmental policy and communication was at odds with tribal communication. In general, it seems as if Indians were considered to be one verylarge pariah with which the government had to deal. Instead of looking at the problem as one of mixing cultures, the government historically took a more ad hoc approach, changing its policies as it changed administrations, changing its focus to fit the cultural and material needs of "American" settlers and urban areas, and reacting out of guilt because its policies did not work. As a bureaucratic organization, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has suffered along in a similar manner. Regardless of the amount of empathy many of it personne

Category: History - C