Custer Died for Your Sins

Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, is a 1969, non-fiction book by the lawyer, professor and writer Vine Deloria, Jr. The book was noteworthy for its relevance to the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement and other activist organizations, such as the American Indian Movement, which was beginning to expand. Deloria's book encouraged better use of federal funds aimed at helping Native Americans. Vine Deloria, Jr. presents Native Americans in a humorous light, devoting an entire chapter to Native American humor. Custer Died for Your Sins was significant in its presentation of Native Americans as a people who were able to retain their tribal society and morality, while existing in the modern world.

The book consists of eleven essays and is critical of aid organizations, churches, and the US government, for their efforts to 'help' Native Americans, which often hinder rather than help progress. Deloria also objects to the efforts of anthropologists to understand Native Americans, devoting millions of dollars to the study of individual tribes that would help the tribes to advance themselves. The book advocates Native American religion, and encourages church groups to lay aside their theological differences and help the tribes whose members they sought to convert.

Deloria pointed out numerous beliefs and attitudes that affect Native American-White relations. He noted that many whites claim Indian ancestry, usually by a grandmother who was an Indian Princess and wryly noted that tribes were evidently entirely female for the first 300 years of white occupation. The essay goes on to list many other myths about Native Americans.

While noting that U.S. Presidents continually stressed the need to meet its treaty obligations with foreign powers, they have had over 400 treaties with Native American tribes and have yet to meet their obligations on any of them. Deloria saw the Vietnam war as just another example of the lack of integrity in the American government.

This chapter covered the termination policy of the 1950s, designed to assimilate tribal members into white society. Deloria believed that this was just another way for whites to obtain Native American land.

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