Vizenor Concordance: On POLITICS

 “Deloria invited me to record an interview with him at his suburban home in Denver, Colorado.  His comments that early autumn more than fifty years ago were direct and heartfelt about native resistance, education, organizations, reservation politics, and always with a generous sense of humor and native irony. The discussions were casual, more conversational than academic or journalistic, and lasted for about an hour in the dim light of his basement office with the scent of laundry soap,” is the first paragraph of my interview “Waiting for Crazy Horse: Vine Deloria, Native Ideologies, Irony, Survivance,” scheduled for publication for the first time in the online biannual journal, Transmotion, early in 2026.” (3.1)

“My first question that afternoon in the basement was about his singular book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, published a few months earlier in 1969.  He responded that “we really need the younger generation to come in and take over the whole structure of Indian Affairs.”  Vine was thirty six years old at the time of the interview, and in the next five years he inspired thousands of young natives to engage in politics and governance, participate in national organizations, and study treaty law and literature, and at the same time he graduated from the University of Colorado Law School, taught at Western Washington State University, advocated native fishing rights, and published five more books, We Talk, You Listen; Of Utmost Good Faith; God is Red; Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties; and The Indian Affair.” (3.1)

“German Marxism and Critical Theory at the Frankfurt School first focused on cultural materialism, communism, and the politics of fascism and consciousness.  Critical theories are creased and complicated by expositions, analytical translations, violence, political and cultural events, and creative perceptions.  Shamanic favors and the recognition of critical theories become a clever chase of native consciousness.  The consideration of native totemic shadows, trickster cosmology, the chance of irony and mockery on separatist reservations and in existential colonies, are seldom the subject of critical theories.” (3.2)

“My critical contention about monotheism, the mercenary fur trade, reaty reservations separatism, casino cultures, the politics of existential native colonies, the conversion of communal stories of survivance to victimry in commercial novels, and the digital depictions and artificial intelligence, continue to broaden critical theories and other interpretations of native literature.  Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin were more instructive at the time about storiers, essays, and literature than the other distinguished scholars and philosophers of the Frankfurt School.” (3.2)