Vine Deloria Jr.

Fulcrum, $16.95

If you mixed an ultraconservative religious leader with an angry American Indian, you'd get Vine Deloria Jr. Deloria, who died in November, has many fans - mostly because of his 1969 book Custer Died for Your Sins - and they, no doubt, would disagree.

But his latest book will confirm for nearly everyone else who has read one or more of his two dozen works that he was angry at what he saw as a growing godlessness in contemporary American society. His posthumous The World We Used to Live In is a call for today's American Indians to accept as true many of the stories told by Indian medicine men in earlier centuries.

He didn't even like the term "medicine men" (although it's used in the subtitle: "Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men"). He writes in his introduction that "a much better description would be the holy ones."

"Certain individuals," he writes, "had experiences, insights and powers that could not be denied when searching for answers to basic questions."

Those powers, he adds, were not medicinal but holy.

In his preface, Deloria writes that the belief Indian communities once had in those holy ones has been corrupted by American commercialism: "The consumer society is indeed consuming everything in its path. It is fair to say that the overwhelming majority of Indian people today have little understanding or remembrance of the powers once possessed by the spiritual leaders of their communities."

That's not much different than any preacher telling us we need to return to some old-fashioned values. But when that preacher tells us we need to accept a literal reading of the Old Testament, or any other holy book, people living in a modern scientific age might have a hard time agreeing.

And Deloria wants his readers to not simply return to old-time values but to believe, for example, that in the 19th century a Saulteaux medicine man was able to get spirits to sing through him, and when some white men watching the ceremony suggested it was the medicine man singing, he had a large lodge built and asked the spirits to make it shake, which they did, and the white men were convinced.

Many of these experiences involve an ability to read the environment. For example, in 1855, a coyote's howling told some Cheyenne they would soon be attacked by Pawnees, and they were able to prepare for the battle.

There are about 150 such stories in the book, and their mere quantity tests a reader's willingness to believe.

Challenging Deloria's Indian religious beliefs is like challenging any religious leader who expects others to believe a holy text. If you don't believe, there's no way you can convince him he is wrong and there's no way he can convince you he is right.

Some fans of Deloria will insist he is a scholar as well as a proselytizer, or primarily a scholar.

But there is no scholarly detachment in Deloria's writing. He was upset, at times angry, that not everyone accepted his version of the world.

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Martin Naparsteck reviews books from and about the West for The Salt Lake Tribune.