Captured in the Middle: Tradition and Experience in Contemporary Native American Writing

Pragmatism and American Indian Thought

Pragmatism and American Indian Thought ~ IN HIS BOOK TRIBAL SECRETS: VINE DELORIA, JR., John Joseph Mathews, and the Recovery ofAmerican Indian Intellectual Traditions, Robert Warrior describes Vine Deloria as being committed to pragmatic politics and being involved in "a search, at once pragmatic and idealistic, for answers to the problems of Native communities and the world as a whole." 1 Pragmatism is similar to plains Indian philosophies that attempt to create a balance between engaging the world as it is encountered and honoring a world of inherited traditions. This sense ofbalance is particularly valuable in efforts to deal with current problems facing local and world communities. [n 1903 John Dewey, chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago, published an extended discussion of what he named "instrumental logic," more popularly known as pragmatism. Dewey insisted on a precise description of the interaction between the mind and experience, asserting that philosophy was intimately tied to everyday life, and that the philosopher had an obligation to society to use his or her training and ability to help other people. This was different from the Western tradition, within which, from Plato to Hegel, intellectual operations ofthe mind were thought to reflect some sort ofideal 12 9 CAPTURED IN THE MIDDLE principles of a perfect mind or soul. Dewey's ideas referred to concrete situations in the present environment and dismissed any attempt to eg.. tablish a correspondence with absolute values.2 This basic definition of pragmatism corresponds in recognizable ways to fundamental American Indian notions of family, community, spirituality, and relationship to environment. Such beliefs may be found in texts such as Black Elk Speaks, in which sufficient Lakota oral tradition was translated into print to give a glimpse ofsophisticated plains Indian history, religion, and ceremony. Although reflective of but one of many Indian cultures, Black Elk Speaks is especially useful in comparative discussion because it is one of the better-known Indian stories in America. Speaking ofhis visions near the end ofhis life, Black Elk said: "I recall the great vision you sent me ... hear me that [my people] may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shieldingtree." 3 Black Elk envisioned two intersectingrealities, the spiritual world, which he called the Red Road, and the earthly world, which he called the Black Road, both of which come together at the heart of the world through a flowering tree. Lakota tradition is rich in content articulated in complex images, yet it remains functional in three important ways. First, the medicine pipe forms the core of a kinship system based on the circle, a unified form promoting balance among all things. An that the Lakota see is in the shape of a hoop, organized into finite divisions such as fourths; for example, four colors, rour seasons, four times of day. Additional meanings are organized within these divisions, creating an order that locates the Indian world within a preexisting harmony. For example, the color yenow is associated with the east, where day begins with the yellow sunrise ; other stories of beginning might feature an animal transformer such as a light-colored horse as a metaphor for a reminder, lesson, or warning. Second, the natural wor1d is made sacred by transformations. One important role oftransformers has to do with tempering excess, as illug.. trated by the fact that being"made sacred" often means providingfor the black road ofmaterial life to be balanced by the red road ofspiritual life. In Black Elk's vision such transformation is represented by "intercon13 0 Pragmatism and American Indian Thought nected, renewing life forms in overlapping images, from grandfathers who turn into horses that turn into elk, buffalo, and eagJe."4 These images often take the form ofhelpers, who counsel temperance or warn of danger. Third, the Lakota social world derives from the natural world. Place-names such as Pine Ridge describe the physical makeup of a particular location; time is pictured seasonally by moons, for example, Moon When the Red Cherries Are Ripe (July) and Moon of the Popping Trees (December); and stories are told in a language of natural signs, as in Black Elk Speaks, when FireThundersays ofthe 1867 Wagon Box Fight, "they shotso fast it [sounded] like tearing a blanket" (14). Utilizing the natural world for sources of meaning ties earthly and human worlds together by association. The details contained within Black Elk's story...