Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Vine Deloria Jr., author of the scathing bestseller “Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto” and an influential historian and spokesman for Native American rights, has died. He was 72.

Deloria, who taught at the University of Colorado from 1990 to 2000, died Sunday in Denver of complications from an aortic aneurysm, his family said. He lived in nearby Golden, Colo.

“Vine was a great leader and writer, probably the most influential American Indian of the past century — one of the most influential Americans, period,” said Charles Wilkinson, of the University of Colorado School of Law at Boulder and an Indian law expert.

Deloria wrote more than 20 books, but it was his first in 1969, “Custer Died for Your Sins,” that brought him to the nation’s attention.

In 2002, Wilkinson called it “perhaps the single most influential book ever written on Indian affairs” and described it as “at once fiery and humorous, uplifting and sharply critical.”

J.A. Phillips, in reviewing the book for Best Sellers shortly after it was published, wrote that Deloria “asserts the worth if not the dignity of the red man and blasts the political, social and religious forces that perpetuate the Little Big Horn and wigwam stereotyping of his people.”

The author’s disdain for Gen. George Armstrong Custer never wavered. In 1996, he reiterated his views on the Civil War hero who died at Little Big Horn at a symposium at the Autry National Center’s Museum of the American West in Los Angeles.

Deloria told The Times then that he continued to view Custer as the Adolf Eichmann of the Plains. Eichmann was the Nazi official in charge of implementing Hitler’s extermination of millions of people during the Holocaust, in particular Jews.

“Soldiers were nothing to him, except tools,” Deloria told The Times, describing Custer as a psychopath. “The soldiers were not defending civilization. They were crushing another society.”

Publication of the powerful “Custer” book followed Deloria’s 1964-67 tenure as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. His leadership in lobbying Congress and setting forth Native American rights issues in speeches and articles during the 1960s is widely credited with forcing a turning point in Indian policy.

“I think what we saw in” Deloria’s “generation of Native Americans was this transition of federal policy from termination” — moving or integrating Indians into cities and eliminating reservations — “to self-determination, and Vine, I think, was the real leader in making that happen,” John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, told Associated Press on Monday. “Through Vine’s leadership, tribes started to stand on their treaties and their right to self-determination.”

Among Deloria’s other books were “We Talk, You Listen” in 1970, “God Is Red” in 1973 and “Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties” in 1974, about events leading to the confrontation between Native American activists and federal authorities at Wounded Knee the previous year. As an expert on Indian treaties, Deloria was a key witness for the defense in the Wounded Knee trial in St. Paul, Minn.

Born a Yankton Sioux in Martin, S.D., near the Pine Ridge Reservation, Deloria was the son of an Episcopalian Indian minister and earned a master’s degree in theology from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Themes of spirituality and theology infused much of his writing. At the time of his death, Deloria had been working on a book about Indian medicine men, the spiritual ministers of Native Americans.

Deloria served in the Marine Corps in the mid-1950s and then earned a bachelor’s degree at Iowa State University, his theology degree and then a law degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He taught at the University of Arizona from 1978 until 1990, when he joined the Colorado faculty, teaching in its departments of history, political science, law, ethnic studies and religious studies.

Earlier this year, Deloria received the American Indian Visionary Award presented by Indian Country Today magazine in Washington, D.C., for displaying “the highest qualities and attributes of leadership in defending the foundations of American Indian freedom.” In 2002 he received the University of Colorado Center of the American West’s Wallace Stegner Award for his sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West.

Deloria is survived by his wife of 47 years, Barbara; two sons, Philip and Daniel; a daughter, Jeanne Deloria; a brother, Philip; a sister, Barbara Sanchez; and seven grandchildren.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0448021684/ourdailydeadc-20/002-8775021-2086417?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2

Today’s L.A. Times obituary of Vine Deloria Jr. characterizes him as, “…an influential historian and spokesman for Native American rights.” That is somewhat like saying “William Shakespeare was an influential playwright and spokesperson for late 16th and early 17th century European Culture.” We more appreciate the words of the noted lawyer and historian Charles Wilkinson
, “Vine was a great leader and writer, probably the most influential American Indian of the past century — one of the most influential Americans, period.”

While we’re being crabby, we ODDones give the “Understatement of the Month” award to the same obit that describes Vine Deloria Senior
as, “…an Episcopalian Indian minister.” For crying-out-loud (we guess as opposed to “crying-in-quiet”) the senior Deloria was a star athlete who became the first American Indian to reach a national leadership position in the Episcopal Church
.

One of Vine Deloria’s sons, Phil Deloria (named for his great grandfather Philip—the son of General Alfred Sulley and a Yankton Sioux woman) is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. We ODDones recommend two of his books, “Playing Indian”
and “Indians in Unexpected Places.”

As for today’s title, “A real Indian,” well just consider the alternative

LA Times
Peter F. Drucker, the down-to-earth business thinker who defined the role of management guru, died Friday at his home in Claremont. He was 95.

During more than 60 years as an author, professor and consultant to some of America’s biggest corporations, Drucker challenged people’s thinking about organizations and popularized the notion of the postindustrial “knowledge worker.”

“Peter could look around corners,” philanthropist Eli Broad, who knew Drucker for 30 years, said Friday. “He would say things that seemed rather simple but in fact were very profound. He saw the future.”

Former General Electric Co. Chairman Jack Welch credited a pithy question from Drucker with helping him understand how to restructure the far-flung GE empire, a sometimes-wrenching process that turned the company into a stock market dynamo and made Welch one of America’s most celebrated managers.

“Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ ” Welch recalled Friday night. “Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.”

Drucker’s simple question ultimately led to Welch’s operating maxim that if a GE unit could not be No. 1 or No. 2 in its field, it should be jettisoned.

Claremont Graduate University said Drucker died of natural causes. He was the Marie Rankin Clarke professor of social sciences and management at Claremont from 1971 to 2003, and he continued to write and consult from the campus until his death.

Drucker was often called the “father of modern management.” But on the occasion of his 90th birthday, he described his life work much more simply:

“I looked at people, not at machines or buildings,” he said. That approach led to nearly three dozen books and thousands of articles that formed nothing less than a guide to the 20th century economy.

Peter Drucker is dead. Drucker, the father of modern management, asked simple questions, and got rather profound results. Ask Neutron Jack Welch

Our ODDfellows paraphrase our favorite Druckerism, “The fundamental difference between philosophers and salesmen is that salesmen are accountable for results.” Think about it.

Drucker wrote the majority of his 32 books in the three decades after he moved to Claremont College at age 61. Think about that too.

Only one recommended book today, but it’s a good’n, “The Daily Drucker.”

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a
hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.
~Henry David Thoreau

Ahem, what did Drucker say about philosophers? EOM

NY Times
Fernando Bujones, whose pure classical technique, sheer power and bold temperament made him one of the first American-born male dancers to become an international ballet superstar, died early Thursday in Miami.

Mr. Bujones with Marianna Tcherkassky in an American Ballet Theater production of “Giselle” in 1995.
He was 50 and had two homes in Florida: in Orlando, where he was artistic director of the Orlando Ballet for the past five years, and in Hallandale, near Miami.

The cause was melanoma, said his cousin Zeida Cecilia-Mendez. The Orlando Ballet announced in September that Mr. Bujones would take a three-month leave to be treated for lung cancer. But Ms. Cecilia-Mendez said the final diagnosis was metastatic melanoma.

Mr. Bujones was one of American Ballet Theater’s most versatile stars from 1972 to 1985 and again in the 1990’s. He dazzled audiences with his whiplash turns as the bravura skater in Frederick Ashton’s “Patineurs,” his precision and perfect Romantic style in August Bournonville’s 19th-century “Sylphide” and his interpretation of more than one troubled hero in Antony Tudor’s dance-dramas.

With his curly hair, slim build and hyperextended legs that inevitably tapered to sleekly pointed feet, Mr. Bujones projected a deceptively wiry silhouette that was immediately transformed by his explosive technique and attention to stylistic detail.

As a young dancer he had two idols: he wished, he said, to combine the purity of Erik Bruhn with the power of Rudolf Nureyev.

In the end, he was himself, a virtuoso of the highest caliber (Solor in “La Bayadère”) who was occasionally idiosyncratic but always meticulous about his work in the 19th-century classics, which he danced in companies both here and abroad. He also staged these works for large and small ballet companies that he directed, including Ballet Mississippi and the Orlando Ballet, as well as troupes in Brazil, Spain and Mexico.

Mr. Bujones joined Ballet Theater in 1972, and two years later he became the first American to win the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, a prestigious event until then dominated by Soviet dancers. But Mr. Bujones felt that his triumph was overshadowed by the defection of Mikhail Baryshnikov at that time.

“Baryshnikov has the publicity and I have the talent,” Mr. Bujones said in youthful exasperation. Reflecting on those remarks in 1980, he said that he had felt his achievements had been overlooked, but that he had since matured “like a good wine.”

Born in Miami on March 9, 1955, Mr. Bujones was sometimes considered a Cuban-trained dancer because he began studying ballet in Havana, to which his Cuban mother, Maria Calleiro, took him twice before she and her son settled again in Miami in 1964.

Today’s dead one (no euphemisers we) is ballet star Fernando Bejones. Cause of death = metastatic melanoma
. According to the American Cancer Society
, over 55,000 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma each year, and almost 8,000 will die. Some urge us to use sunscreen and “slather on lavishly” (we ODDones love the vernacular of the South); however, lest this give you a false sense of security, the protective effect of sunscreen is more than a little bit controversial (“Sunscam”),
and it is worried that use of the SPF stuff may actually increase risk of melanoma, since it allows people to spend more time in the sun without burning. “Back to the Bat Cave Robin.”

So how to close out the week with the themes of confessions and apology and make an ODDassociation with the today’s dead one? (For those of you just checking-in this week, scroll down to pick up this week’s ODDramblings, and don’t be such a stranger.)

Okay, here goes.

Ballet is unarguably one of the higher arts. Opera fits into the same category. (To contrast with lower arts, see dwarf throwing
.) Now let’s consider confessions. We ODDfellows confess that we went to the opera this week. We can’t apologize, since we, in point of fact, found it enjoyable, and actually stayed awake. So there, all you who write to us and tell us we’re uncouth and insensitive. In addition, we suggested to the man standing in line for the men’s room, with his topcoat buttoned, shivering, and complaining of how cold the theatre was, that he might want to consider getting his thyroid checked . We be helpful Fellows.
.

To the overly made-up woman, wearing the dead animal, and who turned around and scowled at us when we culturalODDfellows, exiting the opera house, asked our ODDcompanion, “I enjoyed it, but don’t you think it’s a bit overly dramatic?” we say, “How’d you get the blood off?” Seriously lady, lighten up, you’ll live longer
. Oh, oh, we’re sounding a little too P.C. Time to go set up a wolf trap in Mineral County
.

Finally, speaking of lightening up and living longer, take a breath Bill O’Reilly
.

Have a good one folks, we’re spending the weekend volunteering in the library unbending dog-eared pages in the human sexuality section.

Ta ta.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.
~Johnny Nash “I can see clearly now”