American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Vine Deloria Jr., named in 1974 by Time Magazine as one of the twelve most important religious thinkers in the world, passed away 13 November 2005. The many accolades after his death, ranging from the obituary in the New York Times (“Champion of Indian Rights”) to the conference held one year after his passing at the University of Arizona (“Where do we go from here? The legacies of Vine Deloria, Jr.”), attest to the monumental contributions he made during his life in so many areas (for example, law, Indian studies, spirituality, political organization, metaphysics, and history); he was a Renaissance man. Deloria wrote numerous books that deal with spiritual themes: God Is Red comes to mind as one of the first. His recent book that deals with spirituality, The World We Used to Live In, was published in the spring of 2006, several months after his death. Deloria and I discussed spiritual and religious themes for almost three decades (from the time I took a graduate seminar with him until the summer before his passing). We engaged in an ongoing dialogue about religious freedom (in particular the free exercise clause) as well as the role of images of God in Western and non-Western traditions. This commentary’s primary purpose is to begin to examine how Deloria deals with the divine in particular and the holy in general. It was only during the last year of his life (through correspondence and conversations) and the year after his death (by reading his works and an unpublished manuscript