dell takeaway from deloria

Philip Deloria mentions his grandfather throughout the book. An episcopalian minister, a rather unexpected vocational choice for a young man in his time.  This brought to mind the influence of christianity as a social leveler.  Missionaries get and deserved a bad rap for their racism and denial of religious freedom to the Indians in general, especially during the boarding school years.  But many Christian Indians today are strong in their faith and religion is considered an important overall blessing in the lives of most reservations.  Deloria writes with respect of his grandfather's life choice and I have interviewed Christian Indians of various denominations who say they are grateful for their christian experience.  Just a thought. I think that Deloria made the point that racist expectations are misplaced.  Natives involvement in many aspects of modernity portray clearly that the limitations racist views place on other than white races as primitive, incapable, lazy, etc. are just plain wrong and always have been.  The colonial racism that caused so much death and hardship for Indians from the start of interracial contact is based on false assumptions of evolution and although Deloria never directly addressed it, the unexpected lives of his examples all have in common this thread, that other than white people are able to cope, survive, and civilize every bit as well as the descendants of Europeans, who were starving to death and living in utter squalor at the time of contact.  For that matter, so able are the people of New Guinea, Indonesia, Africa, Brazil, Guatemala, etc.  Today the inequality of globalization according to the neoliberal capitalist social development trope is reality.  The recent indigenous social movement exhibited at Copenhagen where indigenous representatives from around the globe presented the bill for climate change to the rich nations illustrated clearly that reality.  Reparations are called for, an end to racism is called for, indigenous rights are called for, and Deloria's work is part of that call.