This week I taught Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Custer Died for Your Sins in my 20th century American Indian History class at Towson University. First published in 1969, the book was a sensation and helped launch Deloria’s lustrous career as a writer and academic; he ended up getting a law degree, teaching at the Universities of Arizona and Colorado, and writing and editing a couple of dozen books, many of them quite important and influential.
The success of Custer is understandable. Deloria was an excellent writer, and he used humor and an accessible prose style to gird his discussion of very serious issues. But beyond that, there was also the curiosity factor.
In 1969, most Americans knew virtually nothing about Indian peoples or their histories except for the cartoonish portrayals found in Hollywood Westerns and dime novels, which were still ubiquitous. Those myth-making machines had firmly cast Indians in the 19th century, either as savage obstacles to civilization who needed to be swept aside, or as stoic, noble savages, foils who recognized the superiority of “the white man,” and partnered with him to help “tame” the West.
Thus, when Deloria explained in frank and unapologetic terms that Indians were in fact still here, and then went on to enlighten readers about what had been going on for the last century, many Americans were dazzled. In part they were dazzled by his obvious brilliance. But in part, they were simply dazzled that an Indian would be so “modern.” As Deloria’s brother Phillip once lamented, journalists who came to interview Vine were often disappointed to find him wearing a blazer and writing on an IBM electric typewriter instead of wearing fringed buckskin and sending prose to his editor by way of smoke signals.
Given the state of affairs in 1969, it’s understandable that one of the major themes in Deloria’s book could be summed up thusly (in my words, not his):
America, you think you know about Indian people, but really you don’t know shit about us; you just mythologize us and manipulate our history and culture to suit your own purposes.
Ergo the title of the book.
Forty-two years later, the manipulations, simplifications, and misappropriations continue. A couple of weeks ago, while I was out and about (which is why I’m just getting to it now), John Stossel took it upon himself to go on Fox News, open his mustachioed mouth, and tells us all about how Indians would be so much better off without the federal government messing up their lives.
Stossel claimed that, historically, no group has received more help from the U.S. government than American Indians, and that this is why they’re in the worst shape of any group. He then called for an end to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which is part of the Interior Department. “There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs,” he said, pointing out the obvious.
So is Stossel’s point valid?
Truthfully, the issue is so complex that it would be ludicrous for me to try to hash it out in a 850 word blog. I wrote a nearly 300 page book on this issue, and it covered just one reservation during a few decades of the mid-20th century. But the short answer is this. 
Indians are the only people who had independent nations and sovereign governments in America prior to the founding of the United States; they are the only ones who have consummated international treaty agreements with the federal government since then; and most of those treaties are still in effect. Furthermore, many Indian people today have dual citizenship with the United States and their own Native nations.
The BIA itself has a long and very tortured history, much of which wasn’t about “helping” Indians, but rather was about serving as an instrument of U.S. colonialism. I’ve debated with other scholars the extent to which that is still the case, but the organization is undeniably much better than it was just a couple of generations ago when Deloria wrote Custer.
Understandably, Indian people tend to have mixed feelings about the BIA. However, very few that I’ve met actually want to see it abolished. Why? Because one of the things it’s designed to do is manage the nation-to-nation relations that Native Americans, and no other Americans, have with the federal government. So most Indian people I’ve met want to see the BIA fixed, not eliminated.
And that’s a really simplified version of things.
But on some level, the details that underpin or undermine Stossel’s rant are beside the point. Instead, it’s actually about what Deloria was saying in 1969. Stossel doesn’t really know shit about Indian affairs, he just thinks he does. And when he went on Fox News to supposedly talk about Indians, it wasn’t 
really about Indians. It was about John Stossel shoe horning a shockingly shallow and superficial version of Indian affairs into his ideology; it was about grossly simplifying the complexities of three million people and more than three hundred nations to suit his own political agenda.
Unfortunately, Vine Deloria’s critique is still relevant more than four decades later. I say it’s high time for non-Indians to stop furthering their own interests by using Indian people, cultures, and histories as mere talking points, as if they were props in a stage show. It’s patronizing and insulting, it’s manipulative and disingenuous, and it stands in the way of the honest dialog that Deloria encouraged.