Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

This chapter continues Deloria’s examination of the modern Indigenous experience. He begins by joking that many white people act surprised to see Native people interacting with the modern world. He writes:

One of the intriguing little puzzles with anthropologists, Congressmen, missionaries, educators, and others often pose for themselves is whether an Indian tribe can survive in a modern setting. For the most part the question is posed as if the Indians were just coming out of the woods with their flint-tipped arrows and were demonstrating an unusual amount of curiosity about the printing press, the choochoo train, the pop machine, and other marvels of civilized man (225).

In Deloria’s view, mainstream society, despite its fascination with Indigenous people, continues to view them as simply behind the times. He argues that to many Americans, the ultimate goal is a suburban life surrounded by modern comforts. They conclude, therefore, that if an Indigenous person does not have this life, it must only be because they cannot attain it, not because they don’t want it.

Deloria believes that while the standard white narrative holds that modern comfort and individualism are the pinnacle of human society, he and other Indigenous thinkers see that tribalism eventually takes hold within every type of social structure.