RED PROPHET: The Punishing Intellectualism of Vine Deloria, Jr., flawed man with interesting ideas

RED PROPHET: The Punishing Intellectualism of Vine Deloria, Jr.
DAVID E. WILKINS
Fulcrum Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$25.95 trade paper,, $20.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the face of looming, tumultuous global change, this examination provides answers for those venturing into Vine’s work in Indigenous and non-Indigenous politics, ecology, and organization. David E. Wilkins’s insights, based on his personal relationship with Deloria, document the sacred life and legacy of “one of the most important religious thinkers of the 20th century, according to TIME.

A must-read for any deep examination of Indigenous legal, religious, social, and philosophical tactics.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: If we are, as a civilization, going to survive this existential inflection point we find ourselves at in 2025, we need fresh, better ideas.

Vine Deloria, Jr., presents some of the most underdiscussed, freshest contributions to the worldwide discussion of what we as a culture need to do to keep on living. The culture of the West, its capitalism and its greed and its solipsism, have landed us in a rotten mess. The same thinking that got us here will not get us out of here. Maps are handy, but they're limited by the mapmakers' ideas of what needs to be, what should be, included on them. It's time to look beyond the edge of the map.

Vine Deloria, Jr., is called "the Red Prophet"...an yclepture that makes my 1960s-trained self wince a bit...but justified by a family and personal background of Episcopal religious study. The man was son of an Episcopal missionary, and studied to be a missionary in his turn. Like all prophets, he spoke against orthodox thinking. The issue for me as I learned more about him is that he rejected consensus reality as much as any religious nut, eg Ken Ham, does, even claiming Native Americans coexisted with dinosaurs, that white peoples' science is a religion with unquestionable orthodoxies (there is truth in that analysis), and that the conclusions of geologists about the age of the Earth were lies to exploit Native Americans.

There are no full-throated convert's proselytic shouts forthcoming. I'm not going to defend the less acceptable to me parts of the man's thought. I am going to encourage you to do what I did, look into the overall analysis of the systems we in the West have imposed on the planet. Deloria was opposed to extractive industry's utter dominance of the means we all need to live. There are no reward systems for sustainability. It is the way we got into this mess. Equally, Marxism's orthodoxies came in for Deloria's disapproval for its hegemonic tendencies that exclude other ways of understanding the world.

So while this hagiography of a passionate, persuasive person is not The Way, the way leads past, eve through, his head. Many, many are the Native American ideas and reasons and methods that we ignore at our substantial, near-term peril. Don't dismiss them because the messenger was messy. You aren't perfect, I'm not perfect, why should we expect Vine Deloria, Jr., to be perfect? Read, think, take what you can from a thinking person's thoughts.

We're in trouble we haven't seen before. Dare to think thoughts you haven't before, maybe there are solutions not part of your usual thinking in them.

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM, touching, moving story of lesbian life and love in 1950s England

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM
VIKKI HEYWOOD
Muswell Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Public companions, private lovers.

1951: behind the counter of a modest post office in a Buckinghamshire village Miss Dora Ham and Miss Beatrix Veal maintain their careful facade as respected local spinsters. But their true story is one of passion, and together they have built a life of quiet dignity and service in rural England.

Their true story is one of suffragist activists who fell in love at a rally in the 1900s, danced in London's secret gay clubs between the wars, and comforted one another during the first night of the Blitz. Now over the course of one pivotal day their carefully constructed world begins to fracture. Through Beatrix's wry perspective we witness the severe impact of post-war changes on their peaceful existence. Changes that will lead to heart-breaking decisions for Miss Veal and Miss Ham.

At the heart of this intimate, moving and witty novel is a story of resilience, the dignity of love that cannot be spoken, and the challenges that come when the future no longer feels safe.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The antique dramatic structure of setting the action of your tale over the course of one day is antique for a reason: Focus. Audience focus, author focus, character focus, are all enhanced...even compelled...by setting all the action in one day. Author Heywood does that very well in Veal and Ham's life-challenging day.

These women are, very quietly, living as open a queer life as is possible in most of the world even today. Keep your head down, do your job, and people will mostly ignore you. Best you can hope for is that it will be a benign form of ignoring, not one of silent sneering. Veal and Ham, since they do work that's useful and even pleasant to the villagers they serve, get a big dose of selective attention on their service not on their behind-the-scenes lives; their dishonesty, though, in not being open does create mild ill-will instead of quiet acceptance. It's the last piece of even qualified good luck the ladies have on this terrible day.

Losing one's home ia an absolute emotional tornado. Veal and Ham, after moving out of London to escapr the Blitz, have lived the quiet village life...with excursions back to London for lesbian companionship...for a decade. In fact, the world around them is not the world they know, and still less the world they knew as suffragettes. The economic realities of the 1950s are austere and unforgiving, they are focused on survival as the people adjust their lives to being one among many markets not The British Empire. The main income Veal and Ham have had, expensive candy, is drying up in this new world so they can no longer make a go of it as they have been earning steadily less.

Does any of this ring any bells?

In the story we're told, no plan is in place for their future. They are...numb...at the overwhelming nature of losing home, livelihood, and status all at the same time. The one intention they had formed, a very permanent one, is for several reasons not carried out. But what are they to do? A mild enough venting of feelings against their odious landlord isn't a plan for a future.

Does there need to be a future? Are we...am I...so deeply conditioned as to find an ambiguous ending intolerable? No; not at all. I'm only giving this book four stars because it is a solid piece of plotting and a lovely job of writing about one day in a long life together. It is a complete story, as is the later-published (1973) original ending of Mrs. Dalloway called Mrs. Dalloway's Party. It was excised for a reason; where the novel ends is exactly where it should. Likewise, in this book, there are things as missing that should not be. Or, if a truly satisfying one-day novel was to come to being here, a different ending point (at 97%, if you're a curious Kindle reader) should have been chosen. As it stands, this is a marvelous story only a bit away from being excellent.

It is still a story I hope you will find and read.

PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE, aptly titled interviews with eminent thinkers

PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE
KATHERINE NATANEL & ILAN PAPPÉ
Haymarket Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A collection of interviews with some of the world’s leading progressive thinkers on the movement for Palestinian liberation and its connections to struggles for justice across the globe.

As more and more people align themselves with the Palestinian people, Palestine in a World on Fire provides the global perspective and analysis needed to inform how we forge ahead on this path of newfound solidarity. Editors Ilan Pappé and Katherine Natanel have gathered a collection of interviews that are intimate, challenging, and rigorous—many of them conducted before October 7th but still startlingly prescient. The interviewees connect the struggle for Palestinian liberation to various liberatory movements around the world, simultaneously interrogating and recontextualizing their own positions given the ongoing aggression in Palestine. This incredible group includes Angela Y. Davis, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Nadine El-Enany, Gabor Mate, Mustafa Barghouti, Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Gilroy, Elias Khoury, Gayatri Spivak, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.

Palestine in a World on Fire highlights the centrality of Palestine in struggles shared across the capitalism, imperialism, misogyny, neo-colonialism, racism, and more. Each conversation tackles urgent events and unfolding dynamics, and the scholar-activists interviewed here provide invaluable perspectives and insights, illuminating the richness and relevance of recent scholarship on Palestine.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ask yourself why the US media does't have any, or not many, pro-Palestinian voices featured as speakers about the ongoing genocide Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinians. An answer comes when you're ready to look at the roots of bias in a hypercapitalist world undergoing a multi-front fascist takeover across multiple countries. Populist values, such as they are, burn brightly when people are afraid and abused. Tech scum are in charge of huge pots of wealth and using it to forward the abusive, hypercapitalist agenda...the luckiest thing that has happened yet is the dopes from DOGE coming after the data and the money of the jerkoffs who voted the scumbags who can't even run a group chat properly.

Waking up to the threat to yourselves, at last, means we all have a small chance of making some of them see the pattern of abuse being used. It certainly also includes the murder and the eradication of people and cultures "They" do not like.

Palestinians are on the sharp edge of the sword. "They" do not plan to stop swinging it. If you and yours are not in its path, you will be.

Essentially this collection of softball interviews of Progressive figures across multiple scholarly disciplines is evidence that the reason libraries, universities, and "lower" schools are all under attack. The way to stop an idea is not to ban it, but to render it incomprehensible and unrelatable. Physics is doing that very handily and entirely to itself by getting really, really deeply up its own ass. Economics and social sciences are having it done to them by "Them" demanding their supply of new thinkers and believers be cut off from resources to learn about the disciplines. Stupid people are easier to lie to than educated ones.

It is a book that's been overtaken by events in some ways. It's a shame that many who could best benefit from its focus are likely not to read it as "the news" is hard enough to contend with, still less launch on a deep dive into how the Palestinian genocide is part of a larger playbook.

The terrible truth is it is working as it always has. Critics of the machinery of totalitarianism, like Alexei Navalny and Primo Levi, suffer awful fates if they're high enough profile to be threatening. The rest if us, the insignificant ones, are left alone to chatter amongst ourselves, as we can't do "Them" much inconvenience still less harm.

So take this as my considered advice: Learn more about what atrocities are going on right now; think about what will keep happening; get angry and resist. However small it is, act against "Them."