An Economic Exile, Outweighed by a Spiritual Exile

This Friday’s discussion (1-13) of Vine Deloria’s chapter “Out of Chaos” covered the chapter’s analysis of Native American exile.  Deloria argues that Western Native American tribes are exiled even though they still have access to their tribal lands.  Unlike Eastern tribes that were forcibly removed from their lands and experience a physical political exile, the Western groups feel a spiritual exile.  The source of this exile comes down to Native American conceptions of land.  Unlike the European based concept of land as a commodity that can be owned, Native Americans consider “what the people did there, the animals who lived there and how the people related to them” (Deloria 244).  Native Americans believe that the land is acquired from higher powers, rather than deeded from one man to another.  This relationship with the land then entails a variety of actions to show respect for the land.  By restricting what the land can be used for, the United States Government deprives the Western tribes from their land the same way that Eastern tribes were removed earlier.  While not completely removed from their ancestral “lands in a geographic sense, [Western tribes] experience exile in much the same way as did their brothers from the East.  Restrictions in the manner in which people use their lands are as much a deprivation of land as the actual loss of title” (Deloria 245).

Losing their land not only came as an economic and political loss the to the Tribes, but the greatest loss was the “destruction of ceremonial life” (Deloria 247).  Further, Native Americans cannot learn the value in the exile because “the inundation of pilgrims makes it impossible for Indians to experience the solitude and abandonment which exile requires in order to teach its lessons” (Deloria 249)

Vine Deloria, Jr., "Out of Chaos, "from For This Land”