Indian from the Inside

Native American philosophy has enabled aboriginal cultures to survive centuries of attempted assimilation. The first edition of this historical and philosophical work was written as a text for the first course in Native philosophy ever offered by a philosophy department at a Canadian university. This revised edition, based on more than twenty-five years of research through the Native Philosophy Project and funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, is expanded to include extensive discussion of Native American philosophy and culture in the United States as well as Canada. Topics covered include colonialism, the phenomenology of the vision quest, the continuity of Native values, land and the integrity of person, the role of cognitive science in supporting Native narrative traditions, language in Indian life, landscape and other-than-human persons, the teaching of Native American philosophy and the value of various research methods. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Dennis H. McPherson is an executive member of the Centre for Health Care Ethics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. He is an Ojibwa and a band member of the Couchiching First Nation at Fort Frances, Ontario and the founding chair of the LU Department of Indigenous Learning.

J. Douglas Rabb is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, and an executive member of the Centre for Health Care Ethics, also at Lakehead University.

Dennis H. McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb

Foreword by Jace Weaver

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 233
Bibliographic Info: 3 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4348-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8592-5
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      v
Foreword by Jace Weaver      1
Preface      5

1. Philosophical Foundations: Is Native American Philosophy, Philosophy?      11
2. Outside View Predicates: Do Indians Really Know Who They Are?      23
3. Dancing with Chaos: Phenomenology of the Vision Quest      60
4. Values, Land, and the Integrity of Person: Cross-Cultural Considerations      83
5. Language and Metaphysics: Native American Ontology and Transformative Philosophy      140
6. Teaching Native American Philosophy through Film and Popular Culture      185
7. Native Control of Native Education Today: Restoring the Hermeneutic Circle      200

Notes      211
Bibliography      213
Index      223

• “A rare find that gives both theoretical and practical insight into the worldview of the Native people. Highly recommended reading for anyone wishing not only to increase knowledge of Native Psychology but also to advance one’s own worldview and to challenge preconceptions”—Canadian Psychology
• “Gives new meaning to philosophical inquiry…valuable”—The Canadian Journal of Native Studies
• “A roots view of tribal ways of knowing and philosophical approach to the quest for knowledge of the things that matter most”—Reference & Research Book News.