Philip J. Deloria

Philip Joseph Deloria (Dakota) is a historian who specializes in Native American, Western American, and environmental history. He is the son of scholar Vine Deloria, Jr. (Dakota) and a descendant of Civil War General Alfred Sully and painter Thomas Sully.^[1][2] Deloria is the author of prize-winning texts, Playing Indian (1999) and Indians in Unexpected Places (2004). Deloria received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and currently teaches in the Department of American Culture at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor.^[3]

Family background

Philip Joseph Deloria is the son of Vine and Barbara Deloria, Jr.. His father was a scholar, writer, and activist for Native American rights who earned national recognition for his 1969 book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Vine Deloria, Jr. was of European and Yankton Sioux descent, and an enrolled tribal member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.^[4] Philip J. Deloria's paternal grandmother Ella Deloria (Yankton Sioux) worked as an ethnologist and Deloria's great-great grandfather Philip Joseph Deloria, also known as Tipi Sapa (Black Lodge), worked as an Episcopal priest.^[5][6] Philip J. Deloria is also the great-great-great grandson of U.S Army officer and painter Alfred Sully, and the great-great-great-great-grandson of painter Thomas Sully.^[7][8]

Education and career

Deloria graduated from the University of Colorado in 1982 with a B.M.E. in Music Education.^[9] In 1988, Deloria completed his M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Colorado, as well.^[10] Deloria received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1994.^[11] Deloria worked as a professor at the University of Colorado in the Department of History from 1994-2000 and is currently a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in both the Department of American Culture and the Department of History.^[12] Deloria is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor's College of Literature Science and the Arts.^[13]

Published works

Deloria is the author of two monographs and a number of articles and book chapters.

Deloria's 1999 text, Playing Indian, addresses the historical phenomenon of "playing Indian", whereby non-Native people in the United States construct national and personal identities through the performance of Indian dress and ritual. Playing Indian won the 1999 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Program for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America.^[14]

Deloria's second monograph, Indians in Unexpected Places (2004), explores stereotypes of Native American people which confine them to the past and analyzes the seeming disunity between Indian people and modernity. Indians in Unexpected Places received the John C. Ewers Prize for Ethnohistorical Writing in 2006 from the Western History Association.^[15]

Deloria additionally produced, directed, and edited PBS program Eyanopapi: Heart of the Sioux.^[16]

List of selected works

• Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-300-08067-4.
• Indians in Unexpected Places. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. ISBN 978-0-7006-1459-2.
• Blackwell Companion to American Indian History, ed. Boston: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. ISBN 978-1405121316
• C.G. Jung and the Sioux Traditions: Dreams, Visions, Nature, and the Primitive, ed. New Orleans: Spring Journal Press, 2009.

References