the first full professor that is native american at harvard. it only took a few centuries there. just think of the next four centuries what might happen then. while we would never accuse harvard or michigan of theft, it's in this beautiful fact that this absurd and good fortune for those institutions was ours before it was there's. philip deloria received his degree from the university of colorado in 1982. wanting to observe and understand humanity from many different angles, he then taught band at a denver metro high school. having observing high school music performance to satisfaction he turned an mma in journalism and communication which was back when you could remember what to call that program when it was an acronym that comes out whenever i try to say. so, by one of the providence most racist act of kindness he took my american history course which was called the early american frontier in the journalism program. in that course, the first assignment require students to write an autobiographical essay about western adventure that they experienced. the assignment launched me on the adventure and i had 50 students in the class but i ended up with 51 papers. so, i poured over the class registration list and was comparing the names there with the names of students who had submitted papers. this did not solve the mystery but it did give it a little bit more definition. a person named hank gomez returned a paper and something had gone awry with hank gomez and his relationship with the university in his name then did not appear on the course list. it probably figure out where this is going. from time to time, they filled the laureate fulfilled his workload and had very capable papers and had the work name of philip deloria had a different version of the paper of colorful, informal and full of vitality and probability and submitted it. that as the work of hank gomez. [laughs] (laughs) harvard has this story on their website or something. it is not on harvard website, no. moving on. it is now public record and that's good. but it's also a public record that hang comments and philip deloria were both a students. i never suggested that hank gomez applied to the yale american studies ph.d. program so i wrote a letter of recommendation two philip deloria and a week ago i had a archive impulse to find the recommendation that i wrote him three decades ago but phil with a sigh of relief did not find a time to perform this exercise and have that resource and management. were moving fast to get out of the way and with the existence of thank you gomez but first february is the two remarkable influential post what were combination of intricacy and original insight and common sense published in 1988 and ended not expected twice in 2004. most recently has published an unsettling was becoming mary scholarly in an african american abstract in the well deserved attention to extraordinary in the artist who's also the great aunt and was widening and deepening what that means an american indian art. continuing his quest to observe human nature and illuminating and enlightening settings. he served as president of the american society organization and the president of the organization and 2022. i see this as a continuity through the experience what which would be doing fieldwork and cheering on that board which is quite a bit more harmony at work then there sometimes is in those circles. he is also a trustee of the smithsonian of the american indian and the repatriation committee which seems to be something of a family addition where they got us writing articles about white men and their hats again i think, hang on this will be an author probably. the associate dean will be an interviewer within the young and the public engagement and he's unstoppable a disciplinary and he incorporates that area and to his world and introduce it to other affects that have been waiting for decades to get to know each other. finally phil deloria is the son you of -- the laureate junior. but i have a memory, we are at the yale art gallery and we were giving comments on art. and in our audience, we began speaking and was this goofiest lady that any of us have any ever encountered. the goofiest white lady. so she got up, she was very outraged, and she looked at the panel and thought it was unconscionable, and intolerable that yale university, would have native american art without a need of american artist participating. i was not her fan, i will say that and not become that, but i didn't want to do, i thought i didn't want to do. so phil said to the white ladies bullet bewilderment, he said we can't be absolutely certain on the dates here, but sometime probably in the 17th century, french traders, came into the area that we now know as south dakota. and this lady is like what do we want his have to deal with anything. and it moves along, and that is the story of his origins. and she shut up quite quickly. and i do not recall her joining as a reception. but she is a smarter woman today. all of us here today, is here to hear the top that phil deloria, is about to give on him and his father. so here is philip deloria. >> thank you. >> i'm so happy to be in this room, of extraordinary people. generously gathered together, to celebrate the 50th anniversary. and my collar my colleague and i were both discussing, about a set of emotional moments as we were remembering this book, and remembering my dad. that had a few of those going, and i expect there will be a few others. i'm grateful for all of you for coming here today. and for hosting the celebration. and patty for putting all together, and for giving a revealing introduction. i feel i cannot begin without a couple of prefatory notes. first i want to bring regrets an appreciation for my mother. we hope that she would be able to be here today, but she had her second knee replacement just a month ago. and she's doing great, but she decided it was too early for her to start traveling around. so greetings and thanks to you from her, and my brother, and my sister and the extended extended family. and second, i want to say a word about humility. as it was mentioned earlier, it's a great dakota virtue. and to be humble is to admit, not only are ignorance, unless the possibility of are learning, put the possibility of other perspectives and possibilities. that we might discuss. so i knew my dad is a son those a father. i knew him as a colleague, here at the university of michigan, as he was closing out his academic career. and in his last semester of teaching, we share the same office. convenient thing for the chair of the department to be able to do. and i've known him as an intellectual, i studied his writings, and i've known him in other ways as well. others of you have known him through different experiences. as a teacher or collaborator. a close colleague. as a mentor. and as a detailed subject analysis. and an author. he was a complicated man, active in many spheres of life. patty complementary, said he is in the disciplinary, but he is much more than i am. science, religious studies, law, ethnic studies, history and probably a few others that i cannot remember. and i never failed to learn something new, about him when i met people who knew him, or engaged in his work, and i want to thank everyone here for engaging in the learning. what was said by robert was natives critics can and should engage one another with more vigor and energy that in the past. so maybe it's a piece of heresy, that custard died. it's a world historical book, but is not a perfect look. it's greatness to rise from the arguments that have advanced, and self determination and responsibility and the way that it catalyzed movement, and said possibilities. particular style and voice, that model for those who came after. and only sings right, they are super important about this book. but to see, it name and discuss it and even joke about it, the imperfections and ambiguities, is not a sign of disrespect. it's a gift that any book gives us. we need to embrace those gifts. and we do so with humility and respect. that engagement measures, a sort of respect that my father would appreciate. he was a guy who would not shy away from a tussle, and combat was a part of the battle at the dinner table, and what we play monopoly, and sometimes he would bring my sister and i to tears, even though we are playing he was destroying us but. i do feel it incumbent, because so many people have told stories about his relationship to the telephone. but to do one of my own, that one of my favorite moments, was when my dad, who would love the film the godfather, and watched it many many times. he watched the film, before he would sit down to right. and you can watch the godfather over and over again. and on the weekend, my wife and i got married he recorded this message on her answering sheen. >> if you come to be before even now, the suffering this very day. -- . and that really captures, some essence of him. as a prankster, a guy with an incredible sense of humor. so enough of that. for the american indian people of his period, custard died for your since, is the capitalizing text of the indigenous political consciousness. i called out to a non native audience with a critical voice. and the demand for accountability and action. five decades later, it is still relevant. we can begin with some of the obvious reasons, that we talk about this morning. so the book institutionalized, -- it was a delicious defensiveness on the part of margaret mead, and collections of commentary and in the end, a real transformation of that discipline. it may be the books most visible contribution. maybe not the most significant but visible. at the same time one might argue, then already fading christian church in indian affairs one had been dominant for centuries, was not entirely to the detriment of indian people. the book took the pummeling to new heights new audience. it was a bestseller, at a time when no indian checks had a voice in the market. so 1969, was a moment of native president presidents, and by the native american indian movements, and everything that came after. 1969, white americans, and black americans and others, saw native people, in ways that were new to the 20th century. many of the reviews in the writing, threatened my father as the young radical voice of red power. that is often have stories told. but for those who like the american west, they would've interesting to see how they reviewed this new york times. reading the book now, we are struck by a different configuration. and problem solving. and i think in the 1975 interview, my father framed himself in part as being merely sympathetic to the young radicals. he was frustrated at the failure of the federal government to respond to the 20 points. that was a document that looked at the broken treaties. and the restoration of treaty relationships. he was more frustrated by what he saw as a failure, to travel counselors councils, and organizations that would wrestle. reading custard in that light one might recognize what came before that said he was not exactly a young radical as we oftentimes think of it but he was in many ways fundamentally institutional person and he claimed no membership in the american indian movement. though he provided strategy and testimony, and he seems to pay dues to the native indian youth council, but was not associated with most of its members. and indeed he rather consistently, and in this book named the national congress of american indians, and traveled governments, as the best and most hopeful institutions for the future. at the conclusion of his 1971, edition of red men in the new world drama, he provides a list of the major indian groups at work today. and he encourages readers in this to go and promote and support these particular groups. there is nothing illogical about it you see he grew up in the shadow of the 1934 indian organizations act. he had a powerful fate, in the future of indian people. and tribalism, tribal nationalism, i think it was one of the cornerstone bases, for that faith. he contrast to tribalism with militancy, and framed as more challenging, and ultimately the more productive route. he recommended tribal nationalism. he criticize hippies and countercultural lists. and he was even willing, on occasion to praise counter cultural lists, for kind of getting it right. he had an open mind, on this question. he tried to see, as we heard earlier, the corporation in modern form of tribalism. failing to launch, the requisite critique, of later capital and profit under capitalism. and i think you're right, if this was an open question for him, it was an interesting intriguing one. seems to me, he was perhaps interested in a different question, about the kind of writes that might be held with different entities. and how it might be thought of in bigger broader terms. his definition of travel nationalism, was in precise. it rested on his relationship to other governments. another bit of the nationalism, came out of his convictions, that indeed people had distinct, and i want to emphasize this, superior forms of self governance. social relations, and cultural production. those forms, crucially were tribal. relational, interdependent, responsible and spiritual. and how it evolved over time. this is words matter to him, it developed over time, and can reach a certain level, which things work better. like trial and error, and experience an action result produces a certain kind of result. in a way the radicalism of the book, it reads maybe differently as radical in retrospect, but it comes from how much optimism and faith he had, that indian people, when given control over their lives, would do well. and would develop new forms of travel nationalism. they would be a model for changing the contemporary social relationships across the board. this is the tone that struck me when i read the book. so how much faith he had, how much confidence he had. this is a critique of course, but this is a futuristic book. this is a book looking towards things that can and do and will happen. there's nothing crazy about this either, that same moment that the i.r.a., was one of both in eternal-ism intense internal-ism, and quietly effective self management. the possibility for strong trouble administration, was real for him. he was a personal admirer of many of the travel leaders in the 19 fifties in 19 sixties. and he cares characterize them as an excellent cohort. ready for challenge. us i myself thinking in parallel, in terms of his friend -- . i want think that is striking about her career, and revealing about his, is the sheer numbers that indian leaders with and she partnered with over the years. this is and was a massive as -- of hundreds of leaders and political workers. and in that context, it's not difficult at all to identify political and important work. in these kind of fittings. today we often point to, in the niyc, the red power movement. indeed the critique of travel councils, searches something as an origin story. it is worth remembering, that that is not the story in this book though. as he sat down to his typewriter, in 1968, those narratives had an attraction for him. 1968 poor peoples march, is center in his mind. the teacher triumph, over udall's bill, was one of the shining moments. it offers a linchpin that is less remember today. as he wrote alcatraz, the takeover had not happen. it broke at the same time as the first reviews of kuster came in. and their views were november 9th, 14th and 18th. alcatraz the takeover, was november 20th. so it's all unfolding in november of 1969. and those things are not quite magical, at that moment. in the book he surveys the landscape of indian country, and he thought strategically. as robert warrior, become slightly later, 1972 imagine the kind of flan of confederation and. they would recruit and support to form the next cohorts of leadership. travel chair organization, would have policy and legal strategy across tribes. it's actually pretty good vision of how things might've unfolded. but they didn't unfold that way. not to say it's not a good vision. one way to trace the origins of this book, in the institutional political activism, would be to focus on the three years my father served as the director of the -- . from 64 till 67. in kuster he presents, woody often or gave as an origin story. he found himself escorting a visitor around wyoming, and it was indian days. in a moment of political struggle and uncertainty, and somehow the dust cleared and he became the director. a young guy, who they did think they could push around. so my father did come with the slogan platform, and a competitor he had to debate that's how we came there. it is essential to his career, the planning and strategy and forethought. it meets up with situational awareness, good timing and operational deafness. he was situational, and he had vision. his first months were taken up by administrative things, power struggle with the previous director, who refused to give up the checkbook and financial records. this was a time of financial stress, physical stress fiscal stress for the organization. and then there is point of learning on the job. and my grandfather, ted sociological study for the church, at that time it was driving to reservations around the country. it was an introduction, to look at indian country as a diverse hole. so my father was traveling around with his father, going into the communities, going to the church, is being there but another part was drawing on what my grandfather has had done as a sociologist. and he was sociologist but also football player in 1922. and my grandfather sort of schooled him in many ways. and in this interesting, my father was also taking the experience of his aunt. who hurt work as field would, was came through her father's network of church and kin. and the information that he provided to her. when i show the deloria men, in a trajectory like this, i feel impaired to also i feel that i must show the women to. one of the things that is cool, is there is that painting my great great grandmother. done by alfred sala, who would be a father of her child. so the institutional capital in a way, it was administrative. but also was at its core, based in the kinship relations. and the next works established through his family and friends. the book bears a lot of traces of this learning. not all of which is completely indian positive. there are notes on the challenges, and the burnout and directors position, frustration with the and evenness of participation. and the unpredictability of indian politics. the first half of the book, is razor sharp. as other folks have mentioned. as it takes critical aim at stereotyping, legal and political history, government, churches and of course the anthropologists. the second half is more meandering. moving through different see different themes, these are essays. rather than a sustained book. indeed it seems likely, as someone mentioned earlier, that his editor, only encounter will read the book today, but let me pull out a couple of chapters. and many people have talked about humor, and i want to pull out a couple of humorous chapters and pull that it so we can think of it to get. together. so indian humor, the one i like best came out and you could take it as a standup routine, it has an important but a light veneer of argument. you know by the humor, indians are not stoic people here is a form of survival. this could be an easy chapter, that was my experience as a young person. this is the one i could assimilate to, and illegible one. of taking a breath, and coming out of those tough chapters in the beginning. and doing that before launching into the rest of the book. i don't think is that it all really. and i am increasingly inclined to read it, to the consideration of his style. and to a problem that he confronted as a writer, which is the relationship between style an argument. in my fathers writing, there is this tension between the two. argument is sometimes sublimated to style. sometimes style, allows him to close through arguments that might be stronger. style was oftentimes buried to argument. in ways that was incredibly strong and powerful. like all writers, you don't always get it right. feeling the tensions between those things, has been interesting in terms of reading this book. style, i also want to say carries meaning and content in and of itself. style matters. it's not just a superficial thing. so this chapter suggests to me, it's not just him. they were talking about something larger. a native sense of style, which he embodied, and pulled together a multi model. to explore this dynamic, between style an argument, we may linger on two of the famous passages in custard. i will let you read these quickly for a second and then we can talk about them. it is nice to hear you chuckle. , chuckling is good. so different methods are interesting to me. so, i have just sort of tried to digest the sentences a bit. one of the things you can see here, and let me make an argument, that this passage is as famous as it is, is one where style doesn't support argument. so the general statement, the sets the parameters of what will happen. then we have a couple of specific things, people have horoscopes, take from the stock market. it's a chuckle. and then this is something, the tfx and the hensel, tfx was a fighter jet, and mcnamara was supposed to be procured, to serve all the branches of the military. it ended up being a huge disaster that did not work. but the insole. is this what is this? churches possess the real world, interestingly when this is published in playboy, that sentence was moved, by some copy editor, and replaced by american american politics has george wallace. which may make much more sense. as you can see how this all comes together at the end, this incredible superlative, and claim in all of world history right, indians have been cursed more than any of the person. and this hyperbolic claim, is with given its style and it's great and it's a punchline. but we oftentimes see like the setup to this, it could've been so much better done. this may be was not his best example. but contrast that with this. which is one of my very favorite passages. a friendly opening, hey gentle white reader, one of the finest thing about being an indian is that people are interested you, and your white and your plight sorry. and this beautiful set up the other groups have, difficulties and predicaments. and it tells you that there's a dispersive kind of break that's going on here. that he wants to pay attention to. then, this incredible critical sarcastic sentence, our foremost plate, you know this is serious stuff. is our transparency, and people can tell just by looking at is what we want. what should be done to help us, how we feel and what are real indians are like. this is to me what captures the style here. this is funny it's smart and witty and sarcastic. it is completely and totally analytically doing things. then he keeps going right. indian life as it relates to the real world is a continuous attempt not to disappoint, people who know us are calling out to those readers. so thank you for you force us to live our lives according to what you think. and the killer in the kicker at the end, this does and. this is harm. these are the hertz of history and we have suffered. so this is a piece of rhetoric right. it's fantastic because it's the analysis and the wit and humor and irony it's all happening at once and so much of his writing actually functions like this. morbid functions like this. and the other works okay to but this is where the power lies. the anthropology rift, famous for its republication,. so the sense of sequence and timing, and the point of politics. so read for this kind of writing across time and you can see as my friend says it reminds me of the same kind of generations of many native writers before. . >> the humor chapter exemplifies and codifies. and defines his writing. and provides a model, for indigenous style of critique. that culture producers were emulate. you have to look at cool funny native stuff on youtube, and you can see the younger generation has the same kind of voice. scathing irony, smart and a lot of stuff going on. and we should note in that same instant, there was another literary tile, that would also be emulated by subsequent generations. that's why think the two of them are so important in that moment. irony requires intelligence and self awareness. and the conversion of political and historical ironies into humor, that requires something more. it transcends awareness. which is what my dad was trying to do. both a sympathetic awareness from white readers, and a generative, forward-looking software, intelligence and sense of self. for readers and's future indian writers. that produced new ways of thinking, closely tied to old ways of thinking. he was a product of the 1960s, the groovy sixties, but a new age that would be built on indigenous foundations. and i want to point you to this, no progress has been made. the laws 40 years old. it's ideas, adequately phrase for a america cannot now express the realities of a space age indian community. that is actually not from custard, but i think captures his sense that there was a political project, ahead for native people. ahead again that thinking has not yet come to pass. another one thing and his chapter in my quest views, the red and black. that's where his native concerns, two african dominated civil rights movement. he felt important to it tabulate the clear sense that the histories, goals were visible in these two struggles for justice. if the chapters, sometimes clunky sometimes a bit insensitive, occasionally didactic, i think he correctly perceived, the indian people needed to deal not only with white supremacy, but also with ways that the civil rights narrative, that is right space, legal packs, and in the states that also posed a problem, for tribal sovereignty and collective rights. as it does so often. custard lays down a marker for the future. one he took up in greater, perhaps more sensitive detail. and then in subsequent ridings. today as white supremacy has become a cultural currency, embraced by a certain sector of americans, native peoples face a counter intuitive challenge. that is african american history troubles troubles have come, but comes white liberalism. more specific origin story, forecaster might begin with a 1967 book, by stan stein or the new indians. it was built as a translation, to the white mainstream. stein are, along with -- -- other people. new york publishers, was aided by stein, or engaged a number of these intellectuals to write books. my father was able to make it happen. but not so easily. he had a 500 dollar advance, from mcmillon publishers. and after three months and two labourious trapped years, he flew back to home. and he was convinced the writing was no good. just surprise, his editor liked it. and pulled out a copy page from one of norman male years manuscript. it was covered in red ink. to the extent that my father realized, as he said with great delight, mailer only half wrote his own pros. and that there was both editorial help, and poppy help for him as well. he told me about this mailer page a couple of times. i was in graduates cool. according to my mom, after that new york meeting, he'd be he relaxed and began in much quicker pace of writing. when you think of this, the book in both styling content, the chapters were arranged many of the familiar speaking points, that he had direct he had developed as a director. i talk them all about this, and she said he didn't have to do specific research for this book. when he did do a lot of research for other books. but here he sat down, after everyone went to bed and he just let it rip. so my grandparents were poor, or poor people in this gentle way, of the underpaid native clergy of the church. they failed to build wealth. they were unable to build wealth, during the depression. and that was too late during the post war years. i watch my parents climb, over the course of my own life. from the working poor, where they started into the upper middle class. when he wrote kuster, we lived in a denver colorado, and i actually was thinking of trying to buy the house there, it was sort of it was walking distance for a suit high school. and my sisters crib, was a bit harry potter-esque, and kind of a closet, and there is a tiny little kitchen, and an equally small living room. and the only place my dad had to write. and he began his habit of sitting cross legged, in an easy chair, with a typewriter sitting on a coffee table. and that eventually destroyed his back. but of course nobody slept in this house, because everyone could hear the typewriter clocking away all night. then my dad would go to the law classes in the day, study and he was not a super studious student. as he often would confess. but he was steady a bit, and then go back and write all night. and as i have suggested, the book reveals a relative beginner, struggling to learn the craft. and it's at its best, when you can hear the oral in the language, that's when writing reflects everyday speech patterns. that's why the funny sarcastic bits. this is the world he operated in verbally. ellen sometimes he was in his thinking language. not quite confident of what he had to say. or did he need to -- . we the black on the red chapter, show some uncomfortable in his own skin about writing about the parameters of race, and racial injustice. you can also see the early thinking of books leaders come. his musings on religion, are found throughout the texts. and in that sense, kuster can be read, as an imperfect first draft for his career. if you are thinking in more substantive writing for here to come. he was lucky with mcmillon, and especially with the book jacket. we are talking about the book jacket a minute ago. and so, i'm going to show you the green mcmillon version. which features the scary, did i'd eagle, holding a tomahawk in its beak. and you see where the color comes in here. and the design of this, was by a guy named jason -- . and this is a sidebar, just a rocket. he was a designer with a push pin studios, which was a definitive studio in new york for 20 years. between the fifties and the seventies. then even beyond. and he was one of the number of young guns in the studio graduating from the school of visual arts and one of my dad's happy's moment around this book, was getting a letter from some native soldiers in vietnam, who had taken the eagle with the tomahawk, and made it into a patch for their flight jackets. and they sent him a couple of them. this was so emotional, an important and meaningful to him. so what is interesting, i think it's some of the ways that this reflects this kind of sixties design kind of thing, you can see a text conversation going on between -- and his boss. and first of all, partnering together on the jab it's campaign buttons, and the quarter going back to the 1967 design, and this is the middle panel. for the cover. both covers, reflect push pins, and here's the magazine. this is as sixties as it gets. they rejected the regular narrative design, and focus on communicating concepts and ideas. sir some on sometimes on surreal pop art. you can see this when they take this visual photograph, and put it over this kind of sixties psychedelic thing. both of these covers i think are fantastic examples of this. i think it is well served, you know mcmillon in the sense and at this point i want to do a quick shout out also, so maybe i don't. okay that comes later. sorry. it is also worked out, going back to this question that mcmillon's publicity machine, also did a really good job with this book. and my understanding is, they are the ones that place the chapter in playboy, to help get pieces in the new york times, and they really pushed all those reviews, and cultivating pete hamill, had this book for a couple. months before it even came out. here's the playboy, magazine and if rob williams was here he, does this type of hysterical rift, where he pulls out a bag, he pulls out the sacred object. that's in play by magazine. but i want to second what he said earlier, playboy was at this moment a place where some pretty intense political writing actually took place and in this 1965 interview with martin luther king it goes on for pages and pages and anyone who is interested in king's legacy it is incredibly revealing and he speaks extemporaneously and it goes over two or three or four days. to the point where what they said is, they want to break down the subject, and passed all of the obvious things that they said, and get them to say other kinds of things which is really more interesting. so you can see, this is a very partial you know even this issue, there is an incredible interview with ramsey clark, who's an attorney general at the time. and i will quickly say this, as a kid when did you first sort of fine playboy. well for me it was my neighbor, the smith family, and my neighbor, who is just down the way, from self mineral street, working class guy, he worked at the brewery, and he subscribed to play way. and look at the pictures. but, i also at the same time, some reading the articles. so that familiar joke, i just get it for the articles, well maybe it could be true. maybe it reaches a somewhat different audience that you might begin to imagine. i don't know how far down the road i want to get with that but hey, because this is one of those deals [laughs] . it is hegemon it, and i don't want displace gender violence in playboy, but also represents. so i think it's important to pull those things, that complex art of context. so once you finish once he finished custer he never look back. he worked to a larger you went to a larger house, my mom and sister got asleep upstairs, but the my basically my room i was right near his office, so we still listen for his routine, big cup of cold coffee, left over from the, morning cigarettes and hours worth of solitary, with the shuffling so you get organizes thinking before touching the typewriter, and a writing dog at his feet. yes. first just dog, then harper, the new dog. we've had our dog names. and then marlowe, finally bob. that was his last writing dog. later we come to stereo, and i do mean he would play things over and over again. many nights, i spent listening to they say don't go. on will return mountain. as and you think oh my god think it's over, and then he would have the same thing again ♪ ♪ . why he did this i do not know what he did. turned out you talk we listen. and he wrote dot is, red and several others. indians of the pacific northwest. in a church focused paperback. and he curious projects, like red man in the new world drama. and behind the trail of broken treaties, important looks like that. but the late 1970s, he had cranked out more books in a decade, the most riders do, throughout their full career. now i want to do a shout out, till fulcrum press. who has taken my dad's legacy in writing, kind have done a fantastic job. just want to say thank you. [applause]. and it ties back to the covers, because fulcrum never fails to have beautiful beautiful covers on the books. and they just beautiful beautiful books. i'm so grateful. then he grew confident as a writer, and he felt he couldn't get comfortable writing in arizona, where my parents moved in 1978. he was worried whether they respected him as a writer. he struggled through three drafts, to finish his book on carl young. but there is also, a heavy wonderful moment in the beginning, when custer defined him as a writer. in an autobiographical fragment, he talked about finding his way through the lion's head bar, in new york city, and being embraced by writers who occupied the place. and here he is, sort of talking about his first night, coming into the lion's head, and i'll just to show you this. so on this magical first night, he stays on after one leaves. and the poet and village voice, oppenheimer comes in, they talk for a while and they walk over to his apartment, so my dad can autograph his copy of custer. and they come back to the lion's head and the night shift is arriving. and this is what he said over it over again, topics would switch from one illusion to another, and this is apparently the moment, we are just smart people back and forth, constantly. and it's no coincidence, that he then later on went to recollect, that this became an obsession to me. i would get to new york city, tipped the bell, boy and we did a lot of behind the scenes work at the lion's head. and then he talked about the lion's head, but he talks about my dad being being at the lines head, and how much he loved it. and marksman said, something like that he said i don't think that he ever came to the city without going to the lines head. and there's great stories to come out of this fantastic jokes and everything. when i was in my twenties, my dad told me this. delorean men, do not figure out their lies until they're about 30. it seems like we're treading water, but it will come together. so he was 29 when he start his first job, in indian country. at the united constitution service. and so it's a bit emotional for me, to read these autobiographical pages, inspired by the closing of the lion's head, and selling off all the memorabilia that was there. sort of thinking back when i was younger man, and imagining him in that moment even, when custard not only opened up for him as you know for opened up for him as a writer, and in a way that he enjoyed and loved embraced it. through the final reminiscent on this, that were pausing on this and don't take to royal. so in 1968, he was struck by the need for lawyers. he was perhaps it was a form of refuge, he saw custer as a book that burned a few bridges. and he said my riding has placed me in a certain position in indian fares. from which i unfortunately will not be able to retreat. and one reason i wanted to write it, was to raise issues for younger indians, which they have not been able to raise themselves. another reason is to give some idea to white people, of the antagonism's and what we felt. so here is the double edged critique to which he was so well known. which was possible to the american institution that he targeted specifically. and he pushed for his version of tribal nationalism. by 1960 1974, the militants had had their moment, and in a way they responded to his critique as a traditionalist. and activists revealed to him the failures of the travel administrations to which she put such faith. in other ways, they had fears and predictions but wouldn't be able to sustain the lasting movement finally he felt confirmed in his belief that instead of steady but aggressively bold work, in long policy and militant in his own way, offered the best path forward. they conclusion, but david martin is in his biography cause the deloria to try gee, customer, god is red, behind the trail of broken treaties, an explosion of righty in the five-year period between 1969 in 1974. one might actually expand that can into a heck solidly or helped all edgy, i had to look up those things, a writing to custard. i have not often gone back to of utmost good faith, 1971. when i do, i am struck by several things. superficially, it is a document collection, but a just finished law school student might put together. it turns out, is much more than that. it is worth returning to the framework that he put on each one of his excerpts, which is simply not standard paragraph introduction, right? often, it is an impassioned plea to pay attention to history and to learn, to follow many cases from a smart and pointed interpretive conclusion. the final sections on indian leaderships and -- are getting with custard, and just as powerful in his elevation of the voices of joe perry, the fort birth tribal council, and robert lewis. it is also worth noting that publisher, straight arrow press chose to release in both hard and paper, with the trade cover, the impact of cluster, the document might actually be as a trade book in this case. then, there is a curious case of red man in the new world drama, a book published in 1931. it had never become, and is still not part of the canon of writing. why care about this book? this has been fundamentally mysterious to me. he, throughout his writing career my dad always under stood that the change late in cultural attitudes, ironically. and in an anthropological position, drawn from his and, you might say he was highly sensitized to cultural politics. both came with a critique, not simply of stereotypes, but of the master narratives that cling to indian people that underpin american senses of itself. the somewhat study, actually quite study language of red man in the new world drama offered him something interesting and important. not a critique, right? he had already done that, but another counter narrative, consistently center indian agency revealed colonial domination's and the rise in brutality. it is in the tradition of helen hunt jackson, perhaps, or the brown -- i'm not sure how well you can see this, but it starts at the very beginning, with the north's, and ends in the present moment. it is a long and deep kind of history. so, i buried my heart at wounded knee, published in 1970 was not a bestseller, which is counter factual, then perhaps this longer history might have become a bestseller, and is an important cultural work off during white readers an indigenous counter narrative, in political power. so what if this was in the market in 1971? finally, there is the treaty project that he did under the auspices of a development in india law, he collected treaties, tribe by tribe. lots of travel members had too quick access to bear treaties. these books, are the ones of my brothers and i painstakingly collated in my basement. to save money, my dad had them printed, but not correlated or bound. he had hundreds of boxes of treaty texts, spent at least a year assembling them book, by book. it is our contribution to cause, he paid us a nickel a piece. >> [laughs] >> as we celebrate custard at 50, it's perhaps worth noting it is a great book, worldly and historical, a landmark book, and a perfect first effort as some of continued to grow as a writer and as a scholar. kind of looked at vine deloria as a genius, full inform, that's an important and comforting idea, and all the better for being a true. it is also clear that custard died for your since needs to be seen as an introduction and master key for tremendously full body of work, a tragedy or have dodgy as you choose, it constituted over five or six years, we reform the court of ideas for the development in the course of a long career. vine deloria we shared the sketchy and impractical, the scholarly endeavor, even has he refined and elaborated the ideas of self determination and sovereignty, so powerfully in a 1960s moment into our present. it is important been to see custard not only in terms of his films books but also in the one snowfall in just a bit by the wayside, to see nothing that robert has cautioned us, asked us to think about. all of the articles, reviews, introductions -- the whole body of work which is extraordinary. it can show us that country is not only a singular intellectual object, but also part of a broader effort to build new oppositional master narratives, and to create important fought structures to both indians and non-indians. also, we tried at least a bit to personalize the book in its processes. it matters to me how these kinds of texts get written, that there is trial and error, that there is work, missteps, plans, unexpected continuance is. it matters that my dad was it tenure in law school, writing at night. or that he had a thing about music, i want to share these pictures with you of the young vine deloria, with his guitar, sort of. he did have a thing about music because, this was his willingness to turn custard into a record, but only if floyd western men got to be the artist. and for those of you who don't know this album, it is really good, it holds up overtime, the song, custard diversions really is a great song shows off floyd as really, an excellent senior. we were talking about this last night, his ability to go custard died for years since, and then go up a little bit, custard died for your sins, a new day must be in. and then he goes like this, custard died -- >> -- -- [laughs] and it is so low, it is like underwater, it's this gravelly, rangy, beautiful thing. i commend it to you, these things matter. what matters is that -- also, i have to show his favorite picture, of his daughter, right? yes, this is his guitar. it matters that he is both a serious man and a prank-ing trick stir, that he was a risk taker willing to experiment and adventure, he had a sniff of friends, commitments in indian country, dogs, family, students, college, readers, all of these different kinds of things. all of these -- here is with his dog, here is the convocation, his good friend floyd, here is being the master of ceremonies at the music festival in cedar park. he was a risk taker, right? he was a guy who was -- i would not do that. but, he did. so, it is easy to look at this book and all of the other books, from a distance. i don't think he did, i don't think you have much of one. custard was responsive to his moment and context, and is so often the case, it was not the activating itself, that he started to see, the threads and webs, possibilities and that ends a king to make up the body of work first constituted between 1969 in 1974, that would be pursued over the course of his career. and, 15 years later, would take on coherence and consistency, that made him one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century, with an echo, impact and words, living words carry strong into our moment. thank you all so much. >> [applause] you are watching american history tv. covering history, c-span style. with coverage, eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures and college classrooms, and visits to museums and historic places. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span three. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. artist harvey pratte shares his vision for the national native americans veterans memorial, in a conversation with kevin gove, or nationalism of the american indian. mr. pratte discusses his background as an artist, as well as his own experience as a former u.s. marine in vietnam. this event was hosted by the smithsonian nationalism of the american indian. >> all right, good afternoon, it's great to see you all hear. my name is kevin goldberg, the director of the national museum of the american indian. we are here this afternoon to talk about the national american memorial we broke ground for the memorial this morning, and we will turn to the business

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