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Vine Deloria Jr. And Indigenous Americans, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Vine Deloria Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux citizen, widely considered the leading indigenous intellectual of the past century, walked on in November 2005. Deloria spent most of his adult life in an unrelenting, prodigious, and largely successful effort to provide those most grounded of Native individuals and their governments with the intellectual, theoretical, philosophical, and substantive arguments necessary to support their inherent personal and national sovereignty. Importantly, however, his voluminous work also sought to improve the nation-to-nation and intergovernmental relationships of and between First Nations, and between First Nations and non-Native governments at all levels. In fact, he was hailed …

Forging A Political, Educational, And Cultural Agenda For Indian Country: Common Sense Recommendations Gleaned From Deloria's Prose, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Fortunately for the human species, in its wide assortment of pigmentations, cultural experiences, and geographic locations, each generation of a given people produces a small number of truly spirited individuals. These are individuals who not only possess the ability to constructively critique and analyze what is both sound and problematic in their society—or for our purposes, a set of societies—but who also have the rarer gift of being able to propound suggestions, ideas, and prognostications on what might be done to improve the human condition, both individually and collectively.

In the breadth and depth of Vine Deloria Jr.'s copious works …