Robert Bunge was born in 1930 and spent his early childhood on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. At age ten, he moved with his parents to Chicago.

He did his undergraduate work at the universities of Mexico and Hawaii and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Roosevelt University and DePaul University, respectively.

Dr. Bunge served on the faculty at DePaul University, Chicago, where he taught philosophy and was instrumental in the integration of Native American thought courses within the philosophy department.

It was his interest in Native Americans that brought him to The University of South Dakota in 1979, where he broadened the Indian language program and expanded it into the culture and philosophy of the American Indian. He also teaches a course in Russian, serves on the university scholarship committee and as a consultant to neighboring schools and colleges, and to the film industry on Sioux Language and culture. He lectures on Indian phhilosophy at seminars, workshops, cultural centers, and reservations. He works with the Yankton Human Resources facility and the state penitentiary on problems related to Indian residents.

Dr. Bunge has published extensively on the insights of Lakota thought and was a contributor to Sioux Collections. He is the author of An American Urphilosophie in 1983, a book on Sioux philosophy. He and his wife, Muriel, recently published a Lakota dictionary for children.

He has lived with the Indians in the jungles of Yucatan, explored the Matto Grosso in Brazil, and has been caught up in revolutions in South America, Cuba, and Mexico.

[Reprinted from Who's Who Among the Sioux, by T. Emogene Paulson and Lloyd R. Moses, 1988.]

Return to Dr. Mackey's Tribute
Return to CyberBulletin Table of Contents
Return to "A Tradition of Scholarly Pursuit"
Return to Institute's mainpage

11 February 2000, lrb