Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Custer Died for Your Sins
Native Americans are not vanishing — they are nations within a nation, with distinct legal, philosophical, and spiritual standing that demands recognition
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Custer Died for Your Sins (Mature (Deloria's breakthrough book, written at 36)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Tradition |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Custer Died for Your Sins
The historical time of treaty-making, federal termination policy, and the late-1960s Native rights resurgence.
Space
Custer Died for Your Sins
The land — particularly tribal lands held in trust — as the central political-spatial issue.
Matter
Custer Died for Your Sins
The embodied Native community whose political existence the book defends.
Observer
Custer Died for Your Sins
The Native intellectual-political observer; Deloria himself as Standing Rock Sioux (Lakota) writing for both Native and non-Native audiences.
Energy
Custer Died for Your Sins
The political energies of the Red Power movement that the book helped catalyse.
Information
Custer Died for Your Sins
The treaty record, federal policy history, and Native political claims as the discrete content of the political-philosophical argument.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The book's polemical sharpness has sometimes been used by critics to dismiss its substantive philosophical-political content; Deloria scholarship (Wilkins, Lyons, Treuer) has worked to recover the work's analytic depth. The relation between Deloria's political-legal arguments and his religious-philosophical claims (developed more fully in God Is Red) has been debated within Native intellectual traditions — some readers preferring the political work, others the religious.