PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2008 WESTERN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION MEETING,
AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES SECTION

Vine and the Divine, Revisited: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Holy1

Thomas J. Hoffman, Ph.D.

St. Mar's University

In the summer of 2006, at the first annual Vine Deloria Indigenous Studies Symposium held in Bellingham Washington, I presented a paper that gave an introduction as to how Deloria dealt with the divine in particular and the holy in general. This paper extends that discussion.

Vine Deloria, Jr., named one of the most important religious thinkers of the world in the early 1970s by Time Magazine passed away November 13, 2005. The many accolades after his death ranging from the obituary in the New York Times ('Champion of Indian Rights') to the conference held one year after his passing at the University of Arizona “"Where do we go from here? The legacies of Vine Deloria, Jr."2 attest to the monumental contributions he made during his life in so many areas (law, Indian studies, spirituality, political organization, metaphysics, history, and so on) such that he indeed was a Renaissance man.

Vine Deloria wrote numerous books which deal with spiritual themes: God is Red comes to mind as one of the first such books. The most recent book of his that deals with spirituality The World We Used to Live In was published in the Spring of 2006, several months after his death. Deloria and I discussed spiritual and religious themes for almost three decades (from the time I took a graduate seminar with him until the summer before his passing). We carried on an ongoing dialogue about religious freedom (in particular the free exercise clause3) as well as the role of images of God in Western and Nonwestern traditions.

This short article's primary purpose is to begin to examine how Vine Deloria deals with the divine in particular and the holy in general4. It was only during the last year of his life (through correspondence and conversations we had) and the year after his death (through reading his works, and an unpublished manuscript which he passed on to me in the summer before his passing) that I believe I started to grasp where he really stood on issues such as the divine and the holy. To try to find out where Deloria stood on questions of the existence and the character of the divine and the holy we shall take several steps. First, his family background, which gives a number of clues as to his approach to spirituality, will be examined. Then some relatively recent interactions with the author and with a radio interviewer will help us understand what he considered the holy to be, and what it was not. Then, in addition to his classic, God is Red, his most recent published and unpublished (but forthcoming) work will be examined to see where indeed do Vine Deloria, Jr. stand on questions of the divine and the holy. This article will hopefully cast some light on the issue of “"Vine and the Divine."”

In order to understand his approach to religion and spirituality it would be helpful to look at his family's background and traditions. Deloria discusses his family from the time of his great-great-grandfather in his Singing for a Spirit published in 2000. His great-grandfather, Saswe, was born in 1816. He was in the Yankonais band. His vision, from his vision quest as a young person, involved the portrayal of a decision that he would make that would affect four generations of the Deloria family.5 In a description of his vision we find the following: "On the left-hand road facing him were four human skeletons... he saw that the road appeared chalky white.... The road on the right was blood red. Looking down the road, Saswe saw four purification tents, small, black, and somber. ...("In Plains Indian visions, the four skeletons and four tents would be understood to represent four generations of descendents who would be bound by this choice."6

Had he chosen it, the left-hand road with the four skeletons would have meant that Saswe would have four generations of prosperous descendants, but the people following him would be no more than skeletons with flesh who would contribute virtually nothing to the world. It would have been a safe but completely nondescript family that nonetheless would have luck and would prosper.

The red road, on the other hand, was fraught with danger but filled with life. The four purification tents meant that Saswe would kill four men of his own tribe and have to undergo four purification rituals. He would have great powers as a medicine man, the Thunders would be his close friends, and many birds and animals would help him. He was given a special stone to make it rain.7

In his vision he had the choice of going down a chalky white road to the left, which would have led to four prosperous generations who would live safe, non-descript lives who would basically contribute nothing to the world; or he could choose to go down a red road, where the four generation's lives would be fraught with danger, but would be full of life. If he chose this road Saswe, Vine Deloria’s great-grandfather, would have great power as a medicine man. The four generations would all make important contributions to the world. He considered the risky road, the one with challenges yet great opportunities to contribute. He chose this road, the red road.8

Deloria's great-grandfather became a holy man and a Yankton chief. (More extended comments on his life are available in Singing for a Spirit.) Over time he recognized that things were going to change in the future, and saw his people needed to adjust to survive. As part of this, he was one of four chiefs who invited the Episcopalian missionaries to begin church work on the Yankton reservation.

Deloria's Grandfather, Tipi Sapa9 (b 1853), was puzzled by his father's encouragement to adopt the white man's ways. His anglicized name was Philip Deloria. He ended up becoming both a Sioux holy man and chief, and an Episcopalian priest. He had such an impact within the church that "In 1936 when they were completing the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. … [there] were placed sixty statues entitled 'The Company of Heaven.' The statues included apostles, saints, and more recent heroes of the faith. Tipi Sapa was one of three Americans whose statues were included."10

Deloria describes his grandfather's conversion. When he was 17 years old he was riding to the Indian agency and heard a hymn coming from the Episcopal mission. The song was “"Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah." "The tune, as the Sioux sang it, was a dirge that could hardly have been comforting, but the song does remain with you after you hear it a couple of times."11 This is Deloria's grandfather's own account of his conversion:

One day --it must have been Sunday-- I was following a path which led by the little church. Out of the open window I heard the sound of voices. The tune they sang was pleasant to hear. I wanted to hear it again, to learn it if possible. So I went up to the church on three successive Sundays but that tune was not sung. On the fourth Sunday, however, I was happy to hear the hymn I had longed for.

I stood next to a man who sang out of a book. From him I caught the words of the first verse and learned them by hear. When I left that church, able to carry the tune and sing the first verse of the Dakota translation of "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah," I felt that I was the possessor of a great treasure. From that day on I attended the services with regularity hoping to learn other things as beautiful as that hymn.”12

Deloria's grandfather later studied for the priesthood. Once he had become a priest, he "saw his black clerical clothes as a physical representation of the black tipi of Saswe. There were four purification tents and so there should be four generations of the family following a religious vocation."13

Tipi Sapa put a great deal of pressure on his son, Vine Deloria, Sr., to study for the priesthood. Deloria's father, Vine Deloria, Sr., at Tipi Sapa's insistence, became an Episcopal priest. He also became a religious leader. He made important contributions to his people through his ministry. Vine Deloria, Jr., writes: "He was the first Indian to be appointed to direct a national church denomination's Indian mission work."14

It should be no surprise to hear that Vine Deloria, Jr., too, studied for the ministry. Although his father did encourage him, he did not pressure him. He was willing to accept whatever path his son chose. As we know, he took a different path. He did attend seminary but chose not to become a priest or minister. The path he chose certainly was one that involved spiritual leadership. Remember, it was he that Time magazine named as one of the twelve most influential religious thinkers in the world. One merely has to examine his extensive bibliography of books and articles to see that many of his writings deal with spiritual themes. He carried on the family tradition, providing a fourth generation of spiritual leadership.

Deloria closes his book on his family, Singing for a Spirit, with the following: "There is no question that Christianity served as a bridge to enable the Sioux people to make the transition from their life of freedom to a new life confined within the small boundaries of a reservation. … It should be clear … that Christianity did not replace the old Sioux beliefs and practices."15

One can now understand why the day before his funeral Vine Deloria's sister, Barbara, had family and friends practice an old hymn in Dakota. She mentioned only that it was a hymn that was very special to the family. At the memorial service, presided over by a friend of the Deloria family, Episcopal priest, Father Peter Powell, the congregation struggled to sing Tipi Sapa's favorite hymn, "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" as a way of honoring this great-grandson of Saswe.

Several years ago Deloria asked me where the concept of "God" came from. As a result of that question we (Deloria, Steve Pavlik, and I) planned a panel at the 2004 Western Social Science conference on notions of the divine. I prepared a paper and presented it. Unfortunately, Deloria wasn't able to attend the conference that year (even though the topic of the panel was his idea). In my paper I wrote regarding the source of the concept of God: "Where did the concept of God come from? … It didn't come from any where --it is experiential. If it is a concept, then it is something passed down and formalized into dogma and doctrine. Dogma and doctrine are lifeless on their own. … During or after a direct experience of the holy, these beliefs are frameworks by which we make sense out of our experience."16

Since he wasn't able to be there, I sent him a copy of the paper, asking if he wanted to co-author a piece with me on European and American Indian notions of the divine. After some time I received a reply which basically asked if I had been paying any attention to him for the previous 20 years. Some e-mails went back and forth between us, but I concluded he didn't really care for my paper.

In the Spring of 2005, one of my friends shared a set of interviews Deloria had given on the Laura Lee show in the Spring of 2003. Now I have been researching images of God17 for the past 25 years, ever since I was introduced to the notion in a class I took with Andrew Greeley. Deloria was on my dissertation committee. My dissertation was on the impact of people's images of God on their political attitudes and behaviors. Well, I about fell out of my chair when he said in one of the interviews that when it comes to American Indians, you don’t look at images of God – it doesn't apply. In the summer of 2005, while we were at a conference in Bellingham Washington together, I asked him about his comment that the notion of images of God did not apply to Indians, and he used the example of animals --for one tribe an animal may be a provider of good things, and for another tribe the same animal might be a trickster. Thus, you can't make generalizations about certain images of God, or spirit animals for example. I've gone back, and re-listened to that radio program. In terms of animals, he said "You can't stereotype animal spirits --because they appear differently to different tribes. Bear will go from healer to a prophetic figure. It depends on the tribe and the land they live on.” And regarding images: we "talk about our experiences rather than images of God. Your experience is how you are energized. The theologians come in and try to reduce things to a catechism."18

In trying to unpack what Deloria thinks about the divine? I've reread some of his earlier works, and have also read his book on Medicine men, and his unpublished manuscript on Jung and the Sioux. In his God is Red he wrote the following:

There are serious questions whether Indian tribes actually had any conception of religion or of a deity at all. Wherever we find Indians and whenever we inquire about their idea of God, they tell us that beneath the surface of the physical universe is a mysterious spiritual power which cannot be described in human images that must remain always the "Great Mystery"19

There are, on the other hand, many other entities with spiritual powers comparable to those generally attributed to one deity alone. So many in fact that they must simply be encountered and appeased, they cannot be counted. In addition all inanimate entities have spirit and personality so that the mountains, rivers, waterfalls, even the continents and the earth itself have intelligence, knowledge, and the ability to communicate ideas.20

In the Laura Lee interview mentioned before, he said: “"Every tribe has a creation story. [However, when you look at the question] how does a tribe live in a practical manner? --you don't hear anything about a creator at that point. You hear about a variety of spirits: eagle spirit, buffalo spirit. You hear of all the spiritual entities necessary to live on that tract of land. … There is a total disconnect here."

In his medicine men book21 he referred to a story in which the term "gods" was used. "The reference to 'gods' here reflects Goodbird's acceptance of the Western notion of gods and a mistranslation or deliberate changing of words to convey the meaning of the experience. In the Indian context, of course, we are talking about spirits."22 Deloria saw the concept of God, or gods, as a Western concept; it does not apply to American Indians.

That does not mean that there is not spirit or power or holiness in the world, far from it.

... there is always a continuity of spirit in the world. The real division occurs when we make distinctions based on whether the spirit is incarnate or not and assume a break in continuity. The apprehension of Waken tanka, as the spiritual energy creating and supporting the world, means there could be no discontinuity except in the manner in which we experience life. Here the presence of spirits and their participation in the ritual negates any divisions that the passage of time might have created in our minds.23

All is connected in Deloria's spiritual universe.

“One thing seems certain: dreams, daytime encounters, and visions all consist of communications from higher powers who already know much about us and who have a specific purpose in revealing themselves to us and, at least for American Indians, appear in the form of birds and animals. … Sometimes this phenomenon occurs to teach the human that in spite of different shapes and talents, the universe is a unified tapestry and no a collection of isolated, unrelated entities.24

Not only two-leggeds, four-leggeds, winged and swimming peoples are alive in Deloria’'s world.

“We have already seen that tribal peoples observed the world around them and quickly concluded that it represented an energetic mind undergirding the physical world, its motions, and provided energy and life in everything that existed. This belief, as we have seen, is the starting point, not the conclusion.25

For Deloria, the world itself is alive and is spiritual. "... the Indian stories of the powers of medicine men, affirmed many times by objective reports of highly skeptical outside observers, are glimpses into a world dominated by spiritual energies and concerns."26Interestingly, Deloria hints at the possibility that there can be more than one road to follow. In discussing two stories – one in which the Christian approach is accepted and another in which the "old ways are chosen"27 he writes: "They raise the question of whether in the spiritual realm there is not an interchange of possibilities offered us by compatible spirits working in different traditions."28 It does not have to be an either-or situation. This is perhaps one more reason that religious wars are absent in Indian country.29

Deloria felt that the notion of "God" was a Western European one. “"Indians generally do not stress divinity because it does not make sense to them. A 'mixture' of divine and animal qualities would be absurd in the Indian context because all entities have this mixture as a matter of course. While there are many spirits found in the Indian experience, divinity in the Western sense is glaringly absent."30 He would put it this way with regard to his own people: "Although they did not use the concept of 'god,' the Sioux base all their beliefs on the overwhelming presence of Wakan tanka in everything."31 - 32

... the Sioux had sixteen different concepts describing distinctive demonstrations of energy that they experienced. The most familiar idea was that of Wakan Tanka and it implied a sense of family relatedness and intimacy, a caring intelligence. The physical energy that gave locomotion to physical things, they called skan or Taku skan skan. This concept is usually translated as "something that moves"- akin to the energy fields of quantum physics. Skan seems closer to some of the Jungian ideas that suggest the unity of mind and matter, spirit and instinct, in a certain kind of intelligent existence.33

According to Vine Deloria, experiencing the holy, rather than belief, is what characterizes the American Indian experience (in contrast to belief in doctrine or dogmas as in Western Christianity34). "... tribal peoples, taking a purely empirical approach to the world and their experiences in it, reached the conclusion that the ultimate entity in the world was the mysterious energy they could perceive and occasionally apprehend."35 Where did Deloria personally stand in all this? Huston Smith interviewed him in 2000. In that interview the following exchange took place: "Smith: Let me ask you about the Great Spirit. Is that a personal God? Deloria: It's personal because the universe is personal. That's the way we say things ... there seems to be a personal energy underneath all this, which is what physics is saying now."36 Did he perceive and perhaps apprehend this mysterious energy? He doesn't say directly. But he does say: "I would agree that symbols are necessary to the initial stages of belief, that symbolic representations are necessary to knowing. If there is going to be adequate and permanent maturation, however, people must come to know in their experiences, they remain children if they only believe."37 I doubt that he would categorize himself as a child; thus, he did not "only believe"; he must have "come to know in (his) experiences."

In conclusion, perhaps his notion of the Holy can be summed up in these words:

We can begin with the recognition that the fundamental reality in our physical world is a strange kind of energy that is found within everything – stars to humans to stones to quantum energy fields. This energy is personal or can be experienced personally. It is mysterious but so potent that it is useless to explore all the possible ways to define it. If we say anything about this power or energy, we say that the world we live in is sustained by this power, is ultimately spiritual and not physical.38

Although Deloria clearly sees the notions of God and the divine as Western ones, he has a clear and definite sense of the holy.

 

NOTES

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