Customer Reviews

American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays

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I bought this book hoping to catch a glimpse of the world through Native American eyes. The glimpse I caught inspired me.

From rage against the American genocide all the way to perspectives on the philosophy of the "We" (and everything in between), the voices are many and profound. Most profound for me was Viola Cordova's "Ethics: The We and the I". Her contrast of the Native American "We" focal point against the Colonial American "I" focal point describes how the former provides a basis for morality while the latter leads to aberrations like anti-hero worship. Her description of the Native American concept of interconnectedness illuminates it as a fully practical and responsible way of being in the world (as opposed to the mystical new-age crap you may have heard about interconnecting). Other essayists add the perspective of orthopraxis ("right practice") as contrasted to orthodoxy ("right belief"), and how the former leads to the embrace of cultural diversity and the sharing of cultural knowledge whereas the latter leads to fundamentalism, xenophobia, and on to genocide.

Being a Colonial American myself, these represent new ways of thinking for me. Athough I will never come close to truly seeing the world as a Native American sees it, my hope is that I will be able to overcome 45+ years of being lost in the myth of the "I" and internalize at least some of these ways of thinking about and being in the world.