Viola Cordova

Viola Cordova (October 20, 1937 – November 2, 2002), a philosopher, artist, and author, member of the Jicarilla Apache tribe, was one of the first Native American women to earn a PhD in philosophy.

How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova (2007)
edited by Kathleen Dean Moore, Kurt Peters, Ted Jojola, Amber Lacy (2007)

"Why Native American Philosophy?"

 * Philosophy is a methodological endeavor. It is what philosophers "do." The methods of analyzing Native American thought will be no different than those used to analyze other forms of human thought.


 * By understanding the leitmotiv of Euro-Christian thought and all the ways it has distorted or created a parody of Native American thought, we can discover what our beliefs are not. And that, in turn, can open a window to an understanding of what a Native American philosophy is, a complex context of beliefs and stories-a worldview-that has sustained life in North America since times beyond memory, even against extraordinary efforts to exterminate it, a philosophy that has ideas that might sustain all of us into the future despite Euroman's apparent efforts to exterminate the entire species. The challenge to find a way to live on the earth without wrecking it is so great, that we cannot afford to limit ourselves to only one way of thinking.


 * Native Americans do not see themselves as examples of "primitive" thought, ways of thinking that other cultures have experienced and outgrown. We see our ideas and concepts as rational, viable, and alternative means of interpreting the world. This fact is one of the reasons that Native Americans have managed to maintain a unique identity despite attempts to eradicate that identity. Compare this strong sense of identity to those who have "roots" in a European country. They have given up one identity in order to take on another identity, an American identity. Not all Americans have taken this step and many groups find it important to maintain ties with their original languages, cultures, and even countries, but still identify themselves, first and foremost, as Americans. Many Native Americans will be found in this category. Others will not.

"Language as Window"

 * Language is a window that frames a particular view of the world. Even when the window disappears, the view that it framed remains.


 * As an example of this "pattern-system" that may lie beneath our conscious awareness, consider the way that we "assume" a definition (or paradigm) of the planet we live on. We need not remind ourselves, if we are members of what Whorf calls the "SAE" (Standard Average European) group, that the Earth is an inanimate form of dumb matter; it is simply there, requiring no second thought on our part as we step onto its "surface." We are made aware of the Earth's "animate" character only when something unusual occurs, as in, for example, an earthquake. We are accustomed to assuming that we are walking and living on the surface of a ball that is more or less smooth. Consider, however, another paradigm: What if we view "the Earth" not as a ball in "empty space," but like the inside of a raw egg? The Earth is the yolk, swimming in the egg white-which we know commonly as the "atmosphere," but usually disregard as part of the Earth. In this portrayal, or “paradigm,” we do not so much walk on the surface of the Earth as swim in a narrow area surrounding the skin of "the yolk." The Earth, in this sense, is not a simple hard surface that we need not take into consideration when we plan our actions. The Earth becomes a more fragile "thing." Its permeability is exposed, its "surface" becomes less sure. In this scenario, we are like the creatures that dwell on the ocean floor; perhaps a fish in water is as "unaware" of the water as we are of the atmosphere that sustains us. We become aware of the equivalent of the Earth's "albumen" only when its consistency changes, in a wind storm, for example, or when the air is excessively polluted. The idea of being in something (the Earth as the inside of an egg) would result in a very different set of "forms and categories" underlying our languages than if we saw ourselves as existing on the surface of "a ball in empty space." The egg analogy would not be so unfamiliar to many of the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest, who envision the female Earth as surrounded by a male fertilizing "sky." The reality of the Sky-Father and Earth-Mother in an unavoidable and eternal embrace would then "make sense" to those who presently see the analogies as mere figments of the imaginations.


 * not all American indigenous peoples are fluent in their native language. This has been the result, first, of an attempt to eradicate "primitive thinking;" and secondly, an attempt to eliminate "the Indian" through total assimilation. When indigenous children were taken away from their homes to boarding schools, they were forcibly placed with children of another tribe so that they could not communicate in any language other than English. They were also provided with a new worldview through the ministrations of the missionaries who were often in charge of the schools. Nevertheless, a view of the world that was "Indian" managed to survive all attempts to eradicate the paradigm. The reason that this was so is that behind language there is a "pattern system" of "forms and categories" that could be taught without full knowledge of the language. The "pattern" consisted of more than words and speech; it included also a way of being in the world. This latter is taught through attitudes, through practices, through teaching relationships between people and between people and the Earth. By the time the educators and missionaries abducted the child at about the age of five or six, such attitudes and relationships had already been established. The family, regardless of the educators, could reinforce such a pattern in the home and in the community. There was, in other words, beyond language, a context to being "Indian" that eluded the attempts at eradication.

Linda Hogan (writer), Introduction to How It Is (2007)

 * Ever so rarely a writer comes along and says what others have not found words to say. Usually this writer is a poet and not a philosopher. And yet, philosopher Viola Cordova writes like a poet. As an American Indian woman and thinker, I have long wished for a person who could bring to light and language the significance of indigenous knowledge and the cultural differences of our peoples so eloquently and brilliantly as Viola Cordova, an Apache philosopher. She has gone beyond Euro-Western philosophy into the heart of the indigenous knowledge system and philosophy, as far as the limits of English will allow.


 * According to Viola Cordova, the mystery of understanding tribal concepts of being and goodness seems beyond the comprehension of Europeans who have tried to understand systems that seem to be too complex for them. The anthropologists and those studying tribal peoples too often write their own interpretation of what is said because they are unable to see larger, to think beyond their own thinking enough to come to what is really spoken, meant, and known about the world. For indigenous peoples, each place has its own intelligence, its own stories. "We are not only creatures of this planet but of very specific and fragile circumstances of this planet. We are herd animals. Humans are animals of the group."


 * Viola Cordova looks at Native knowledge systems and languages across the country, encompassing a history of continent-wide pain and the effects of European colonization and dominance, and bringing to words how all of our Native systems derive from the heart of place.


 * In her system of knowledge, there are no Native correlates to the terms soul or god. The things we seek are balance and harmony.


 * Viola Cordova writes that the stories of all people need to be laid out on the table before one understands how to be fully human.


 * There is a given upon which everything else hinges. Viola says that troubles began when the Europeans found that the Indians did not share their sense of land. And, they had no consciousness of what other life forms they were (and are) disturbing. They were, essentially, unaware of living things. Yet community lies beyond family within the surrounding, enfolding environment.