Vince Caroll-Vine Deloria's Wacky ideas

Vince Carroll

Wannabe Indian fighter Vince Carroll's latest target is Vine Deloria Jr. With perfect timing, Carroll's attack comes on the same day as Deloria's family and friends are gathering to celebrate his life.

Carroll uses the editorial pages to attack people who are rarely given space to counter what he says. This time, Carroll has acted even more cowardly than usual in that he attacks Vine after his death.

Many of the published tributes to Deloria since his death have understandably extolled this offbeat sense of humor (see, for example, the Clarence Page column in Thursday's News). And all have rightly emphasized his influential books. But what the obituaries and tributes have for the most part danced around or ignored is the utterly wacky nature of some of his views.

For example, in Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1996), Deloria rejected the Bering land bridge theory of prehistoric migration to the Western Hemisphere since he believed Indians existed here "at the beginning" - probably as contemporaries of dinosaurs. And this bizarre claim only hints at his contempt for much science.

Deloria insisted that we shouldn't sanitize America's past. Fair enough. But let's not sanitize his legacy, either Full column

As is typical of Carroll, he doesn't actually refute what Deloria says but characterizes his views as "wacky."

We doubt any counter views will be allowed in the editorial pages so to voice your opinion, please contact Carroll and the Rocky Mountain News Editor at

Vince Carroll
carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

John Temple(RMN Editor)
303-892-5102
editor@RockyMountainNews.com