Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy

Acknowledgments

A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S My sense of place and history begins in a stretch of prairie on the south edge of the ®ood plain of the Rock River in northern Illinois where I grew up. From my grandfather, who farmed this land, I gained a sense of the way a place makes a person; from my grandmother, a storyteller, I learned how history makes a place and how retelling the past makes new futures possible. This project began in the spirit of my grandparents as an attempt to give credit where it is due, to look at what had been left out of histories of European American thought, and to tell the story again with a different future implied. I began this project under the guidance of Douglas Lewis, who, as my mentor and friend at the University of Minnesota, helped me to give form and direction to my work in philosophy. At the University of Oregon I was privileged to receive invaluable encouragement and criticism from Mark Johnson and Nancy Tuana. Much that is right about this book owes to our conversations; the mistakes, of course, are my own. I would also like to thank my other colleagues at Oregon who have been willing to engage in long conversations about early Native American literature , the philosophical commitments of colonialism, and alternative ways of understanding the growth of American pragmatism. In particular , I would like to thank Shari Huhndorf, John Lysaker, Sidner Larson, Lorraine Brundige, and Rob Proudfoot. I would also like to thank those who provided opportunities to discuss this work in the wider context of ongoing work in American philosophy: Erin McKenna, John McDermott, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Viola Cordova, Thomas Alexander, and Leonard Harris. These philosophers are among the best examples of people whose work is tightly bound to the central strand of the pluralist American tradition that began along the border between Native and European peoples in the seventeenth century. I am also grateful for the formative in®uence of Scott Crom, Beloit College, on my own philosophical history and for the editorial assistance of Richard Breiter in preparing the ¤nal draft of this work. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Lawrence and Betty ix Pratt, for decades of unfailing support and con¤dence that someday the book would be done. And for this last accomplishment, ¤nishing this book, I owe my deepest thanks to Mary Breiter, my wife, and to our sons Alex and Aaron, whose patience, support, and love made all of this possible. x Acknowledgments ...