The significance of my dissertation follows over 100 years of the Dakota/Lakota Deloria family and their responses to colonized Christianity as they experienced it through education, government policies, and the church. It offers both male and female perspectives, the importance of how to be a good relative, keeping Indigenous identity alive even as it remained flexible in a swiftly changing landscape intellectually, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. These four aspects of living are central to Indigenous identity. The study acknowledges the losses of colonization but looks forward the utter need to keep the old ways for the future generations. This is where healing lives and why Native American peoples have numerous ways to help heal from the legacy of oppression for the oppressor.
The Deloria family remained steadfast in the Dakota values from Saswe’s, (Chief of the Band of Eight) vision to convert to Christianity as a means of survival, to the leadership in the Episcopal church for Philip and Vine Sr,; for the body of work from Ella a linguist who preserved the language, kept the stories of the old ways and was an ethnographer; and finally, to Vine Deloria Jr., notable Indian intellectual of the 20th century and beyond.