Red Earth, White Lies

By Vine Deloria Jr.

Book Overview

Vine Deloria, Jr., leading Native American scholar and author of the best-selling God is Red, addresses the conflict between mainstream scientific theory about our world and the ancestral worldview of Native Americans. Claiming that science has created a largely fictional scenario for American Indians in prehistoric North America, Deloria offers an alternative view of the continent's history as seen through the eyes and memories of Native Americans. Further, he warns future generations of scientists not to repeat the ethnocentric omissions and fallacies of the past by dismissing Native oral tradition as mere legends.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555913881
• ISBN13: 9781555913885
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Grade 4 and higher

Customer Reviews

Red Earth, White Lies in Black and White!

Prof. Deloria wrote this book in response to the current scientific fact in consensus of the manufactured story explaining prehistoric Native Americans. It has been five hundred years that in 1492 that Columbus “discovered” the New World and met the primitive and uncivilized savages mistaken as Indians (did he hear the proclamation that they were Yin Dynasty people?). He challenged the dominant migration that indigenous peoples of the Americas survived the long freezing walk from Asia to populate the Americas without the consideration of the Native American oral traditions. He also comments the so-called “overkill hypothesis” that human migrating into the Americas are partially blamed for over-hunting and contributing the sudden and rapid extinction of North American mega-fauna. Who created this false logic to victimize the Native Americans? Who, what and when contribute “Global Warm” since Industrial Revolution and pointed fingers to others such as the most populous countries in Asia? His long ten chapters cited a lot of resources from Asia, Africa and back to Turtle Island. He leads readers to a different perspective to study what dominate the main stream to drown out the other voice. It is fun to read his comment on p.9: it is impossible to sin today because all of the really good sins have become Christian virtues, mush as Greed, once one of the Seven Deadly Sins, has become the chief American and Republican virtue. Who created the toxic economic tsunami and the rest was victimize in loss of job, house, car, health-care, saving and retirement? This book stimulates readers to think when and how indigenous people immigrate to Turtle Island, walking by Bering Strait, by Noah Ark, by boats on Black Current from Asia? Maybe the petroglyphs along the West Coast offer a genesis story!

Red Earth, White Lies

Vine Deloria, Jr. always has the ability to open your mind allowing you to see the scientific fallacies pertaining to the history of American Indians. I found the book to be very enlightening.

Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact

A must read for anyone chasing their Native Heritage and regular readers as well.Vine Deloria is a renowned author and this book is his best.

Evolution, Indian origins, and other tall tales

I'll start this off with a disclaimer. When I was in graduate school at the University of Colorado, Vine Deloria jr. was my favorite professor. He was funny, cynical, iconoclastic, and thought-provoking. This book is Vine Deloria in print.Vine challenges your assumptions. Do you believe in evolution or the idea that the ancestors of the American Indians came from Asia on the Bering Strait land bridge? You do? For gosh sakes, why???Vine, with exquisite detail, relentless logic, and taunting satire, reveals the utter absurdities of these theories until you wonder with embarrassment how anyone, scientist or layman, could ever have believed such tall tales. Likewise Vine demolishes the myth of carbon-dating, tears apart the racist doctrine that early American Indian hunters hunted the wooly mammoth and other megafauna to extintion, and makes a strong case (even stronger in some of his other books) for the works of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose works were banned, boycotted, and ridiculed -- but never disproven -- by mainline "scientists."I started with a disclaimer, I'll end with a caveat. Just because Vine rips to shreds the myth of evolution, don't assume that he is taking a fundamentalist Christian position. He most assuredly is not. Vine believes the truth of human origins is to be found in the stories of American Indians and of other native peoples around the world. The assault on the glass house of evolution is NOT a science-vs.-fundamentalism thing, it is a bad-science-vs.-truth thing. But it took Vine Deloria to get many of us to realize that just because the theory of evolution is badly flawed and propped up only by the dogmatic religious assertions of the priests of the cult of science, that the creation-stories of the Hebrew Bible are not the only possible alternative.This book deserves to be read by everyone: white or Indian, Christian or antichrist. Even people who fancy themselves scientific should read this book; if they are brave enough to explore Vine's premises, maybe there will be a little less bad science in the world.

Refreshing insight into an old theory

Vine Deloria Jr. is a true scholar who characteristically approaches his subject with thorough research and disciplined reasoning. Applying geology and precise logic Deloria uncovers some major flaws in the Bering Strait theory. He also points to the fascinating fact that oral histories and legends of Indian nations carry pre-historic events such as major geologic upheavals. In this way, he makes the important point that oral histories should on no account be dismissed. On the other hand, he shows how flawed scientific theories are supported when powerful academics will shut out any new facts or alternate theories just to hold on to their pre-eminence. Even worse, Deloria cites cases where those who dared challenge the authorized theory, can have their careers destroyed. After finding medical pronouncements which contradict each other - ie. margarine is good for you; margarine is bad for you, etc. - it is clear that "science" is an exploratory discipline and that final pronouncements or theories should only be given qualified consideration until all the facts and information are in. This should be kept in mind with the recent speculations regarding the "caucasian" skeletons that have been found on this continent. The political dimensions of "science" are glaringly apparent where some, including scientists, leap to conclusions and use science as a tool for further dispossession of the indigenous nations of the western hemipshere.