Spring Break
Speaking with Philip Deloria
Interview by Richard Mace
Philip Deloria, University of Michigan
Issue date: 1/16/08 Section: Spring 2007
Philip Deloria is currently a professor of History and the Director of the American Culture Program at the University of Michigan. Philip Deloria's books include Playing Indian, Yale UP (1998) and Indians in Unexpected Places, U of Kansas P (2004). Earning his Masters in Broadcasting from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1988 and his PhD in American Studies from Yale University in 1994, Deloria records and examines history and representations of identity. In his article "Thinking about Self in a Family Way," Deloria describes the 1971 ethnographic project he undertook with his brother. "We brought our grandfather Vine Deloria Sr. together with our father's tape recorder, and we pushed the record button. A Dakota native clergyman in the Episcopal Church, my grandfather had spent much of his life collecting stories, and he was a gifted teller." (25). From that point on, Philip Deloria has been a collector of stories and histories. Philip Deloria is son of lawyer and author Vine Deloria Jr., and grandnephew of author, ethnographer, and linguist, Ella Carla Deloria.
Richard Mace is a doctoral student in English at St. John's University.
Mace: You have a very recognizable last name. Your father, and your great aunt were well-respected authors and scholars, and you mention the story telling of your great uncle, Philip Lane Sr.; how does their writing affect or influence the way you approach a topic and write about it?
Deloria: One's own voice is always inflected by the many voices that one takes in during the course of a lifetime. So in that sense, my father, in particular, appears in such things as syntax and word selection (anytime I hear myself using the word "exceedingly," I know he's there in the back of my mind, for example). But it is my grandfather, Vine Deloria Sr., who may actually be the most significant figure for me in terms of writing. He was a masterful storyteller, a man who spoke with verve and power, emphatic gesture and subtle modulation. He had a great sense of story rhythm as well. And what a voice! Of course, I never thought about those things when I was listening to him, but I think-I hope-that they are also in the back of my mind.
Richard Mace is a doctoral student in English at St. John's University.
Mace: You have a very recognizable last name. Your father, and your great aunt were well-respected authors and scholars, and you mention the story telling of your great uncle, Philip Lane Sr.; how does their writing affect or influence the way you approach a topic and write about it?
Deloria: One's own voice is always inflected by the many voices that one takes in during the course of a lifetime. So in that sense, my father, in particular, appears in such things as syntax and word selection (anytime I hear myself using the word "exceedingly," I know he's there in the back of my mind, for example). But it is my grandfather, Vine Deloria Sr., who may actually be the most significant figure for me in terms of writing. He was a masterful storyteller, a man who spoke with verve and power, emphatic gesture and subtle modulation. He had a great sense of story rhythm as well. And what a voice! Of course, I never thought about those things when I was listening to him, but I think-I hope-that they are also in the back of my mind.
Be the first to comment on this story