Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

This chapter begins with a reminder of the true purpose of most past interactions between the Indigenous American people and the European capitalist hierarchy: assimilation. It goes on to explore how modern tribal groups are pushing back against this in different ways.

Deloria begins by showing how near-vanished tribes such as the Tigua people of Texas, the Apalachicola people of Florida, and the Wampanoag people of Massachusetts have recently fought to reignite their cultural unity and traditions. In most cases, these tribes never received federal recognition. Many of them were highly assimilated and lived in white communities before that concept even existed. For example, in the 19th century, the Tigua people, a tribe from New Mexico who have interacted with Europeans since the time of Spanish rule, were inaccurately lumped in with the Pueblo tribes, displaced from their home base, and given a small reservation in Texas, a move that Deloria believes was made to create a barrier between white settlements and the Mescalero tribe who they feared. The city of El Paso grew around the Tigua reservation. Instead of fading into assimilated obscurity, the Tigua tribe held onto their culture, and eventually applied for and were granted federal recognition. This opened the floodgates for more tribes to do the same, which led to a resurgence of small tribes in areas occupied by white people for hundreds of years. Suddenly, it became obvious that assimilation had not worked as well as many white leaders believed.

At the time of Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) had a goal of finding as many “lost” tribes as possible. Deloria sees this as a sign that tribal identity is being restored and that the European domination of American culture is beginning to decline. He notes that religious traditions in tribes like the Hopi and Iroquois have long predicted the end of white power. While Deloria hopes for increased unity among Indigenous groups, he warns against the anthropological concept of “pan-Indianism,” which he believes, like most academic ideas, is overly simplistic.

The middle of this chapter is dedicated to urban Native communities, a demographic that is largely ignored by the BIA and other regulatory bodies that primarily concentrate on reservation management. Deloria sees city-dwelling people at the forefront of the new era of interconnected Indigenous life. Many of them still hold strong connections to specific reservations but are fully integrated with their city’s community. He views this as a uniquely beneficial position for cultivating inter-tribal cooperation. Most cities he cites have individual groups for specific tribes, who regularly come together to discuss bigger issues.

Deloria concludes the book by restating his hopes for the future of Indigenous activism. History has shown that organizations like the DOI, the BIA, and churches cannot be relied upon to truly help cultivate resiliency and self-determination among Indigenous people. Even if an individual preacher or politician aims to help improve relations between tribes and white organizations, the survival of those organizations themselves hinges on keeping other tribal structures from having too much power. Millions of dollars can be poured into programs for Indigenous people but until those funds are managed directly by tribes according to their own rules, improvement will never happen. Thus, Deloria believes that the only way for Indigenous people to regain power is to take it themselves. He celebrates the growth of the Red Power movement within the civil rights movement and the increase of both tribal and intertribal activist organizations.