How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova (review)

This posthumous collection of unpublished papers, poems, and a short story by Viola Faye Cordova (1937–2002), of Jicarilla Apache/Hispanic descent, is presented with the presumption of being a major publication in philosophy by an American Indian woman, which obviously is an indisputable rarity for both philosophy and American Indian/Native American studies. However, the novelty of Cordova’s ethnicity and academic training soon wears thin the further one ventures into this series of what one must call sketches, as the individual pieces are too underdeveloped to be called articles. More specifically, what becomes clear is that Cordova’s writings are little more than philosophical editorials written from the perspective of someone who, although she identifies as “Native American,” is driven more by her bitter personal experiences in academia than by her experiences as an Apache woman. Polemics and hasty generalizations about white society abound in this volume, interrupted here and there by some unexceptional poems and a rather droll story featuring hippies.

Because all of the selections contained in this volume were unpublished as of the time of the author’s untimely death in 2002, they bear the distinct shortcomings of never having been put through the peer review or editing process. Beginning with the fact that Cordova has an annoying tendency to refer to “the Native American,” as if Native philosophy were somehow the product of an archetypal Indigenous being, Cordova goes on to severely handicap her analysis of history, culture, metaphysics, and ethics by limiting the context for her discourse to a very simplified portrayal of Indian–White relations, namely, “Indian, good; white man, bad.” Working from such a flimsy premise, much of Cordova’s time is wasted on recounting anecdotes in which she felt hurt or offended and how these personal affronts were really examples of the Western tradition and its oppression of “the Native American,” such as occurs in “The Bridge over Romero Creek” and “Taos Bridge.” Then there is “Windows on Academics,” which is Cordova’s attempt at seeking retribution from her former professors at the University of New Mexico, who commented on her work with such remarks as, “You must not make the mistake of attributing sophisticated notions to primitive minds,” and “The Greeks were not a primitive people” (53). Cordova refrains from naming either the commentators in question or their institutional affiliation. I only know the source of these offensive comments because Viola told me about them when we spoke on the phone back in August 1989, the day before she and her husband moved to Alaska.

It is often difficult for me to identify with Viola’s experiences as a Native person. We differ greatly by age, gender, tribal affiliation, and personality type. Nonetheless, although I have heard my fair share of ignorant comments about Indians coming from the mouths of supposedly educated persons, my own work as an American Indian philosopher was generally supported and sometimes lauded by both my peers and professors. What I learned as an undergraduate philosophy major at the University of Rhode Island, where I attended 1986–1988, was Western civilization is far from a monolith of customs and values. Ever since Socrates took the Athenian aristocracy to task on its notions of the Good, Justice, and the State, Western philosophers have consistently been some of the severest critics of Western customs and values. Entering into that discourse as a Native thinker, one encounters the source of ideas and institutions that have shaped Western societies, whether it is platonic ideals, the Cartesian method, Locke’s notion of government, or the Augustinian concept of time. At the same time, one will also discover radical departures from these traditions, be it Kant’s critique of pure reason, Schleiermacher’s and Kierkegaard’s criticisms of Christianity, or Marx’s comprehensive assault on capitalism. What one hopefully realizes as an Indigenous thinker is...