Reviews

Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria Jr.

breadandmushrooms's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

2.5

aamccartan's review against another edition

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challenging funny hopeful informative slow-paced

4.0

roommate's review against another edition

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challenging funny informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

An excellent exploration of Indian politics, especially when it was written. Some of it didn't quite hit home for me, but the perspective in these cases was incredibly interesting nonetheless. 

mader716's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

brycestevenwilley's review

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funny informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

An interesting read, and a really good prespective of activism of all types in the 60's, from the 60's. By then end, I liked the content, but a lot of the beginning felt like unnecessary jokes and rants (all explained by the entire chapter of jokes). He also has some pretty interesting but out there ideas, that range between "that's a new take I've  never heard, let me think about it" to "that thought wasn't even finished, you just said it was bad". Worth the short read, but I took some of the chapters with a grain of salt.

A minor nit: I wasn't a fan of the audiobook naration in this edition; occasionally, the audio timbre would change drastically in the middle of a paragraph, making it seem like a new chapter or something had started.

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doctormabuse's review against another edition

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5.0

In Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr., over the course of 11 essays, explores the relationship between Native Americans and different institutions in the United States. The relationship between Native Americans and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, between Native Americans and Black people, between Native Americans and anthropologists, between Native Americans and missionaries and the Christian establishment, between Native Americans and the treaties that have been imposed upon them. The essays can be vicious, self-deprecating, tragic, hilarious, deeply reasoned, eye-opening, but they are always extremely lucid and offer necessary perspective. There are elements of the book that don't age perfectly well: Deloria has grievances with the civil rights movement which at times can seem overly fastidious, and in particular he seems specifically very upset with the failure of Martin Luther King's Poor People's March, which had failed in the spring of the year he was writing (and in the immediate aftermath of King's assassination), and these issues seem less important with 60 years of hindsight as I write this. Additionally, women's issues are almost entirely absent which I imagine some contemporary observers might take issue with. These issues aside, the work clearly comes from a very sharp with who was writing in a way that was all but totally new and totally necessary.

palibuchanan's review against another edition

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challenging funny informative slow-paced

4.0

epsyphus's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Rather surprisingly funny and witty. I felt like I learned a lot about the Native American experience. 

itsmejennigee's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Another piece that ought to be required reading.
This book was first published 50 years ago. The true insanity of it all? Every damn word still holds true today. This country that we know has forced its way into what it has become with zero acknowledgment of what it took to get here. A joke in the book: what is a Peace Treaty? When the government wants a piece of your land. I have read up on the history about treaties with Native American tribes which have manipulated, coerced, and conned them into what they currently have only for those treaties of government restitution and protections to be purposefully ignored and denied by the same legal system created for enforcing them. Sound familiar? 
I found it especially interesting about how he compares the Black community to the Native Americans with Blacks saying that they’re lucky to not have been forced into reservations while he explains that they would have been better off with reservations. 
The book is written very tongue-in-cheek, and I can only imagine that the gallows humor throughout is the only way of making it through. Humor really is the best way of approaching a heavy and difficult topic, but is it helpful when the ignorant people laughing don’t have the intelligence to realize it’s about them and their lies? I’ll be posting other recommendations related to these types of reads that I finished last year, but they’re published within the past 10 years as a way of comparing the complete lack of improvement between the two. It’s heartbreaking. 
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We cannot do better without acknowledging our wrongs.

brannonkirkhuang's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

5.0

The book is a bit dated at this point, but still very good. So glad I read it. I learned a lot.