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Description: This course is intended to give students a general overview of the contemporary and historic experiences of American Indian peoples in the United States and Canada. It challenges the dominant culture's stereotypes and its unthinking assumptions about American Indian people in the past and present. It shows how the peoples of America's First Nations engaged the presence and representations of foreigners in their midst through acts of resistance, rebellion, accommodation, and innovation. In the process, it illustrates the great diversity of tribal cultures and histories in North America, and it gives evidence of this in the areas of identity, work, philosophy, politics, society, language, religion, literature, and the arts.
Instructor: STAFF
Grading basis/credits:
Equivalencies:
Description: Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Instructor: Cothran III,Boyd Dean
Grading basis/credits:
Description: The course will focus in particular on the history, culture, and lived experience of American Indian people in the state of Minnesota. This course will explore how Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Dakota people have represented their lives and histories through film, music, oral traditions and written texts. It also includes some work by non-Indian scholars which focus on the distinctive cultural, philosophical, and linguistic perspectives of Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples. The course invites local Dakota and Ojibwe artists, elders, and scholars to speak on their own experiences. It is particularly interested inrevealing the students tribal pedagogical and epistemological perspectives or "ways of knowing"as practiced by Indian people in Minnesota today and in the past. This course will introduce students to the humanities as understood within the intellectual perspectives and methodologies of the Dakota and Ojibwe, in particular, and American Indian Studies, more generally. Since these perspectives fall outside the western humanities tradition, this course offers a culturally unique and tribally based perspective on subject matter in the humanities, namely literature, art, music, philosophy and language.
Class Time: 40% Lecture, 30% Discussion. video, guest speakers
Work Load: 60 pages reading per week, 20 pages writing per term, 2 exams, 5 papers. discussion of readings
Grade: 20% mid exam, 20% final exam, 20% reports/papers, 10% class participation, 30% other evaluation. attendance, readings
Exam Format: question and answer, open ended, true false
Instructor:
McKay,Neil Troy
(Outstanding Service Award)
Grading basis/credits:
Description: Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Instructor: Onishi,Yuichiro
Grading basis/credits:
Equivalencies:
Prereq: 3103 or 3123
Description: In this course on the maintenence and revitalization of North American indigenous languages, our main objective is to prepare for work in American Indian communities on language issues through language planning activities, language documentation (preparation of grammars, dictionaries, and texts), and education (preparation of pedagogical materials, design of curriculum, and teaching). Among the topics to be covered are: overview of American Indian languages; introduction to American Indian language revitalization; language shift and language death; first nation, state/provincial, federal,and international perspectives on language rights and policies; introduction to language planning; language documentation: dictionaries, grammars, and texts; lexical innovation; literacy and orthographic standardization; second language acquisition and teaching; preparing pedagogical materials; teacher training; community activities; proposal writing.
Class Time: 50% Lecture, 50% Discussion.
Work Load: 75-100 pages reading per week, 15-25 pages writing per term, 2 exams, 1 papers. class presentations
Instructor: Nichols,John David
Grading basis/credits:
Description: How do you creatively respond to the transformations and deformations introduced into Native America by the colonizing cultures of Europe and Euroamerica? In this course we examine how a select group of American Indian writers creatively respond to the experience of colonization in the narratives they imagine. This question is not aimed exclusively at American Indian writers though, nor is it even more generally aimed only at Indian people. Rather this question about colonization is aimed at everyone living here now: How do you (you sitting there reading this statement) creatively respond to the transformations and deformations introduced into Native America by the colonizing culture of Euroamerica? This course invites you to think about this question and this writing, even if you never have before. In class discussions we will examine how various writers approach this question and we will familiarize ourselves with the ideas, themes, and tools Native writers use through close readings of their works. In addition to examining the works we will also examine ways the various works ask us to consider and reconsider our own experiences of living in North America. Your responses to the works and our guiding question will be explored, examined, and developed in class discussions, a variety of short writing assignments, and in a final research essay. You will read four or five books for the course as well as a half-dozen or so short readings. As the course is Writing-Intensive you will also do about 40 pages of writing.
Class Time: 10% Lecture, 90% Discussion.
Work Load: 150 pages reading per week, 40 pages writing per term, 0 exams, 10 quizzes. numerous papers, short (2 pages) and one long (10+ pages)
Grade: 80% reports/papers, 20% quizzes.
Instructor: Meland,Carter
Grading basis/credits:
Description: Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Instructor: Power,Susan Mary
Grading basis/credits:
Description: The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the philosophical thought and spiritual beliefs of native peoples of North America. Students will examine a broad spectrum of issues which influence the worldview of native people on this continent, including European contact and thought. Students may find some of the issues to be controversial and personally challenging, however, a thorough discussion of the impact of European influences is important to understanding native people's resistance and survival. Finally, students will also explore the ways in which native philosophy and spiritual practices shape native life experience in a society viewed by many native people as being at odds with their beliefs.
Class Time: 60% Lecture, 20% Discussion. Group work
Work Load: 100 pages reading per week, 15 pages writing per term, 2 exams, 1 papers.
Grade: 33% mid exam, 33% final exam, 17% reports/papers, 17% class participation.
Exam Format: The exams will be a take home essay.
Instructor: STAFF
Grading basis/credits:
Equivalencies:
Description: This course is an historical overview of photographic representations in which American Indian people have been the central subjects. 1) It entails a study of the subtle, complex, and ever-changing relationships between those who take, pose for, and view pictures of American Indians. 2) It considers how the social contexts and purposes of picture-taking influence the content, composition, and coding of images which make up the field of American Indian photographs. 3) It gives attention to the diverse and often contradictory ways in which photographs are understood in meaningful ways, and more specifically, it inquires into whether American Indian cultures engage processes of photographic representation through distinct aesthetic standards and practices. 4) In doing so, it takes a critical look at how the appearance and meaning of photographs are related not only to the cultural contexts in which they are produced, but also to the agencies of those who stand behind their making. Special attention is paid to some of the intended as well as unintended ideological and political consequences of photographic image-making in historical settings dominated by colonialism and its gaze.
Class Time: 40% Lecture, 40% Discussion. reading and studying photographs
Work Load: 100 pages reading per week, 25 pages writing per term, 4 papers.
Grade: 60% reports/papers, 40% special projects.
Instructor: Albers,Patricia
Grading basis/credits:
Description: Visual arts depicting rituals, traditions, values and world views of major American Indian populations. This course is designed to aquaint students with American Indian arts from pre-contact to, and including, contemporary Indian arts. It focuses on materials, techniques, symbolism, imagery and traditions that underlie the art forms in various tribal regions of North America. The class will examine the influence of other tribes and also the effect of European immigration.
Class Time: 50% Lecture, 50% Discussion. Students are required to create an art project using traditional materials and techniques.
Work Load: 10 pages reading per week, 8-12 pages writing per term, 4 exams, 2 papers.
Grade: 10% final exam, 30% reports/papers, 10% special projects, 40% quizzes, 5% in-class presentation, 5% class participation.
Exam Format: essay
Instructor: Chapman,Jeffrey T
Grading basis/credits:
Description: In American Indians and the Cinema, we examine historical and contemporary representations of American Indian peoples in film, the power inequities reflected in those representations, and American Indian resistance to those representations. We will ask ourselves how have particular images of Indians in the movies served the interests of an American nationalist agenda rather than the interests of Native individuals and nations themselves? The course aims to make such questions of the power of representation clear to students and offers the tools to engage in a critique of conventional cultural representations of American Indian people, as well as, more critically, exposing them to an emerging body of work by American Indian filmmakers asserting their own authority in controlling their images and offering their stories to the viewing world at large. The course addresses ideas of diversity and social justice in the U.S. by exploring how films by American Indian filmmakers offer a differing idea of what American Indian experience has been and is--and ultimately examines the development of an American Indian ?aesthetic? by Native filmmakers that is grounded in the historical and ongoing cultural viability of Native peoples. Students taking the course focus on developing a critical vocabulary for understanding both what film is and how it has historically represented American Indian peoples as well as exploring how these representations have changed, or not, in response to changing historical/social contexts. Through examinations and papers students will engage in the task of articulating their critical insights concerning the films and the contexts they emerge from and reflect on.
Class Time: 10% Lecture, 60% Film/Video, 25% Discussion, 5% Student Presentation.
Work Load: 50 pages reading per week, 20 pages writing per term, 2 exams, 4 papers, 1 presentations.
Instructor: Meland,Carter
Grading basis/credits:
Description: An introductory overview of Ojibwe culture, history, beliefs, and traditions, including philosophy and world view. The course is presented in four parts, with a test and a paper due at the completion of each part.
Class Time: 50% Lecture, 50% Discussion.
Work Load: 100 pages reading per week, 20 pages writing per term, 1 exams, 4 papers.
Grade: 20% final exam, 40% reports/papers, 40% quizzes.
Exam Format: Multiple choice; true/false; and matching
Instructor: Jones,Dennis
Grading basis/credits:
Equivalencies:
Description: How did American Indian nations navigate the turbulent nineteenth and twentieth centuries that brought a flood of intruders into their homelands and remake themselves into the vibrant and richly diverse peoples that they are in the present? Beginning with the turmoil surrounding Indian Removal policy in the 1830s, and extending into the present-day strugges of Indian nations to control their own destinies, this course serves as an introduction to American Indian history from 1830 to the present. Touching on such themes such as cultural resistence and and political resurgence in the face of U.S. colonialism, we will focus on the interface between the development of Federal Indian policy and American Indian resistance to U.S. initiatives as a unifying theme, and we will also consider major shifts in the nature of American Indian sovereignty into the present. This course stresses the integrity and adaptability of American Indian societies, and the centrality of ever-emergent American Indian identity to the experiences of Indian people. Particular topics include: Indian Removal and the concept of Indian Territory; Sovereignty: What does it mean? Encounters, east and west; Reservation Life; Pan-Indianism; John Collier and the Indian New Deal; the Indian Claims Commission; Termination and Relocation; Self-Determination and Indian Activism. Readings are designed to complement course session, and include documents, a monograph, a novel, and compiled oral histories of Indian peoples.
Class Time: 30% Lecture, 30% Discussion. films
Work Load: 100-120 pages reading per week, 4-6 pages writing per term, 3 exams, 1 papers.
Grade: 40% mid exam, 25% final exam, 25% reports/papers, 10% class participation.
Exam Format: Essay
Instructor:
O'Brien-Kehoe,Jean Maria
(Grad and Profl Teaching Award)
Grading basis/credits:
Prereq: 1001
Description: This course introduces the student to U.S. domestic policy and federal law as it pertains to American Indian peoples. First, we engage in a critical analysis of the interaction between the three principal actors--Indigenous nations, the Federal Government, and States. Second, we discuss the role of Indian activism, the media, and interest organizations in Indian law and policy formulation. Third, we briefly examine the historical development of major federal Indian policy eras. Finally, we engage in a focused analysis of several specific federal policy initiatives that are particularly contentious at the moment--Indian gaming, religious freedom, federal recognition, and the international arena.
Class Time: 20% Lecture, 80% Discussion.
Work Load: 25-40 pages reading per week, 12-15 pages writing per term, 2 exams, 1 papers. weekly questions
Grade: 25% mid exam, 25% final exam, 25% reports/papers, 25% other evaluation. weekly questions
Exam Format: essay
Instructor:
Wilkins,David E
(CLA Dean's Medal)
Grading basis/credits:
Equivalencies:
Prereq: 3103 or 3123 or instr consent
Description: Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Instructor: Nichols,John David
Grading basis/credits:
Equivalencies:
Description: This course is an historical overview of photographic representations in which American Indian people have been the central subjects. 1) It entails a study of the subtle, complex, and ever-changing relationships between those who take, pose for, and view pictures of American Indians. 2) It considers how the social contexts and purposes of picture-taking influence the content, composition, and coding of images which make up the field of American Indian photographs. 3) It gives attention to the diverse and often contradictory ways in which photographs are understood in meaningful ways, and more specifically, it inquires into whether American Indian cultures engage processes of photographic representation through distinct aesthetic standards and practices. 4) In doing so, it takes a critical look at how the appearance and meaning of photographs are related not only to the cultural contexts in which they are produced, but also to the agencies of those who stand behind their making. Special attention is paid to some of the intended as well as unintended ideological and political consequences of photographic image-making in historical settings dominated by colonialism and its gaze.
Class Time: 40% Lecture, 40% Discussion. reading and studying photographs
Work Load: 140 pages reading per week, 45 pages writing per term, 4 papers.
Grade: 60% reports/papers, 40% special projects.
Instructor: Albers,Patricia
Grading basis/credits:
Description: In American Indians and the Cinema, we examine historical and contemporary representations of American Indian peoples in film, the power inequities reflected in those representations, and American Indian resistance to those representations. We will ask ourselves how have particular images of Indians in the movies served the interests of an American nationalist agenda rather than the interests of Native individuals and nations themselves? The course aims to make such questions of the power of representation clear to students and offers the tools to engage in a critique of conventional cultural representations of American Indian people, as well as, more critically, exposing them to an emerging body of work by American Indian filmmakers asserting their own authority in controlling their images and offering their stories to the viewing world at large. The course addresses ideas of diversity and social justice in the U.S. by exploring how films by American Indian filmmakers offer a differing idea of what American Indian experience has been and is--and ultimately examines the development of an American Indian ?aesthetic? by Native filmmakers that is grounded in the historical and ongoing cultural viability of Native peoples. Students taking the course focus on developing a critical vocabulary for understanding both what film is and how it has historically represented American Indian peoples as well as exploring how these representations have changed, or not, in response to changing historical/social contexts. Through examinations and papers students will engage in the task of articulating their critical insights concerning the films and the contexts they emerge from and reflect on.
Class Time: 10% Lecture, 60% Film/Video, 25% Discussion, 5% Student Presentation.
Work Load: 50 pages reading per week, 20 pages writing per term, 2 exams, 4 papers, 1 presentations.
Instructor: Meland,Carter
Grading basis/credits:
Description: Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Instructor: Albers,Patricia