The American Indian Mind in a Linear World

Book excerpt: Currently, there are three approaches to studying American Indians: from how white Americans approach Indian studies, from the dynamics or exchange of Indian-white relations and from the Indian point of view. Donald Fixico, an American Indian, has been teaching and writing history for a quarter of a century. This book is the direct result of his experience as a scholar who 'thinks like an Indian' in an academic environment created predominantly by non-Indian thinkers. This book addresses current approaches to studying Native American traditional knowledge and acknowledges an Indian intellectualism that has up until now been ignored in studying Native American history. Written primarily from inside the Native world, but fully cognizant of the American cultures outside of that world, his unique voice speaks to a need for understanding the interior Native world: a world in which linear thinking is atypical and circularity is preferable.