Opinion
Harjo: My photo album of Vine Deloria Jr.


"Here are some of the pictures of Deloria in my photo album and memory book.

It is 1965 in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the National Congress of American Indians' convention. Deloria is wheeling and dealing with tribal delegates and doing what NCAI executive directors do. I am a new NCAI individual member, just 20, with a baby on my hip and only one vote, but he takes time to talk with me about cultural rights. We are strong, fit and decades away from gray hair.

Here is Deloria in an Iroquois ironworkers' hangout, the Spar Bar in Brooklyn. Everyone's angry and dispirited about Kinzua Dam, the monstrosity that flooded the last Seneca lands in Pennsylvania and sacred places in New York in the mid-1960s. He's telling them how to organize a battle in Congress. He's telling himself he has to go to law school to protect Indian lands.

Here are myriad images over many years of Deloria at the Lion's Head in Greenwich Village following the 1969 publication of ''Custer Died for Your Sins'' that made him a literary and pop culture star. Assorted celebs and Indian people are always looking at him, admiringly.

It's 1972 and he's looking admiringly at his father, Vine Deloria Sr., who's giving a talk at St. John the Divine in New York City. There's Deloria, who picked up a law degree in 1970, with civil rights attorney William Kuntzler, strategizing about the defense of Indian activists and the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

There he is, in Washington, D.C., when I roped him into working on President Jimmy Carter's 1979 Report to Congress on American Indian Religious Freedom."

Get the Story:
Suzan Shown Harjo: My photo album of Vine Deloria Jr. (Indian Country Today 11/23)

Indian Country Today Articles from January 10, 2005:
Wilma Mankiller: An original thinker with a warrior's spirit
Suzan Shown Harjo: Selective memories of Vine Deloria Jr.
Faith Spotted Eagle: Deksi (Uncle) Vine
Charlie Wilkins: Visionary thinker and wordsmith par excellence
Hank Adams: A Vine Deloria Jr. collaboration: The first decade
John Mohawk: Vine Deloria Jr.'s unfolding legacy
Philip Deloria: Tales of a remarkable father
Norbert Hill: A hero to many

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