Exploring the Indigenous World View

by Vine Deloria Jr., Laura Lee

Vine Deloria, a Native American scholar, cites intriguing anomalies - such as petroglyphs of dinosaurs - and describes Native American astronomy. He suggests the indigenous world view may turn out to be the correct one.

In hour 2, Vine compares the western and indigenous world views, and shares stories medicine men have told him. Says Vine "A lot of tribal histories go back to an entirely different time than is described by Western theology. When certain lands were shaped differently, for example. Tribes in the northwest remember mammoths and saber tooth tigers. petroglyphs look like big animals, some like dinosaurs. I got interested in how much the tribal oral tradition can be relied upon in terms of verifiable sequences of actions or locations. And I found that a lot of Indian traditions fit with the latest things in astronomy and geology. I've been into that for 30 years."

Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Vine Victor Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement. From 1964–1967, he had served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, increasing tribal membership from 19 to 156. Beginning in 1977, he was a board member of the National Museum of the American Indian, which now has buildings in both New York City and Washington, DC.

Deloria began his academic career in 1970 at Western Washington State College at Bellingham, Washington. He became Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona (1978–1990), where he established the first master's degree program in American Indian Studies in the United States. After ten years at the University of Colorado, Boulder, he returned to Arizona and taught at the School of Law.