Deloria's Custer Died For Your Sins: Chapter Analysis

In chapter 6 of Deloria’s Custer Died for Your Sins, he goes extensively into government agencies and their roles in the tribes. He spends a considerable amount of time on the Bureau of Indian Affairs and their area offices around the country. Deloria doesn’t fully condemn the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the area offices, but he points out a lot of their short comings. His main intent in writing the chapter in my opinion is mostly to expose how ineffectual the area offices are. He introduces the idea by relaying a conversation he had with an Interior Office official who told him that “the area offices were scattered ‘strategically’ to serve the tribes” (Deloria 126). With this introduction, the first main thing that really makes the area offices ineffectual is how they are placed around the country. …show more content…
One specific example is the area office in Aberdeen, South Dakota, which has become “notorious for its inability to provide services to the tribes” (Deloria 127). And even worse is the area office in Sacramento, California, which as he describes it by saying that “for decades people have trying to figure out if it has any relationship to Indians living in that state” (Deloria 128). These two examples are among numerous that Deloria presents. Essentially, a lot of the times area offices are just ineffectual for many reasons. One such reason he gives is that fear is present in a lot of the Bureau’s actions. They fear the reactions they could get for basically any decision the make, so they just don’t make any decisions to get around that