[BearwWthoutBorders] Vine Deloria, Jr is dead: activist and author

[Hunter Gray]

Mr. Deloria was a Standing Rock Sioux, born at Martin, S.D. in 1933. - H

Native American scholar dies
By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
November 14, 2005
Revered Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. died Sunday at a Denver
area hospital, friends confirmed this morning.
Rick Williams, president of the Denver-based American Indian College Fund,
said Mr. Deloria had battled an unspecified illness for the past several
weeks. Mr. Deloria was a longtime University of Colorado professor and award
winning scholar best known for his many books, including "Custer Died For
Your Sins" and "God Is Red."

Williams said Mr. Deloria was 73. He retired from CU in 2000 and had been
living in the Golden area.

No details were available this morning from Mr. Deloria's family.

"He was one of those individuals who really kept Indian people from becoming
extinct," said Williams. "He was politically active early in his career,
with the National Congress of American Indians, and he really helped turned
the nation's view around, about Indian people," said Williams.

"He was also probably one of the first recognized political, cultural and
historical geniuses, who was allowed to develop the intellectual thought of
Indian people. He was one of my teachers, and I just had the utmost respect
for him."

HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR]   Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
 and Ohkwari'

I am honored -- humbled -- by the 2005 Elder Recognition Award of Wordcraft
Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. This particular, rarely issued
honor is one of several awards voted by the Caucus [board] of this
organization of writers, storytellers, film makers, and journalists.
http://www.hunterbear.org/elder_recognition_award_for_2005.htm   Regularly
updated.

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and
mysterious and remembering way.  [Hunter Bear]