Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, is a 1969, non-fiction book by the lawyer, professor and writer Vine Deloria, Jr.

Vine Deloria, Jr.

Vine Deloria, Jr. was an American Indian author, theologian, historian, and activist. He was widely known for his book Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto , which helped generate national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement...

 The book was noteworthy for its relevance to the Alcatraz-Red Power Movement and other activist organizations, such as the American Indian Movement

American Indian Movement

The American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...

, which was beginning to expand. Deloria's book encouraged better use of federal funds aimed at helping Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

. Vine Deloria, Jr. presents Native Americans in a humorous light, devoting an entire chapter to Native American humor. Custer Died for Your Sins was significant in its presentation of Native Americans as a people who were able to retain their tribal society and morality, while existing in the modern world.

Content summary

The book is critical of aid organizations, churches, and the US government, for their efforts to 'help' Native Americans that often hindered rather than helped Native American progress. Deloria also objected to the efforts of anthropologists to understand Native Americans, devoting millions of dollars to the study of individual tribes that would have helped the tribes to advance themselves. The book advocated Native American religion

Native American religion

Traditional Native American religions exhibit a great deal of diversity, largely due to the relative isolation of the different tribes that were spread out across the entire breadth of the North American continent for thousands of years, allowing for the evolution of different beliefs and practices...

, and encouraged church groups to lay aside their theological

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 differences and help the tribes whose members they sought as converts.

Significance

Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, was based on a bumper sticker

Bumper sticker

A bumper sticker is an adhesive label or sticker with a message, intended to be attached to the bumper of an automobile and to be read by the occupants of other vehicles - although they are often stuck onto other objects...

, and a Native American slogan from the 1960s, "We Shall Overrun." The book was significant at the time of its publication, as the struggle for minority rights

Minority rights

The term Minority Rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups...

 was gaining increased attention across the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It remains one of the most significant non-fiction books written by a Native American.