Native Americans do not see themselves as examples of "primitive" thought, ways of thinking that other cultures have experienced and outgrown. We see… - Viola Cordova

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

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.

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.