Current Courses

A survey course that introduces students to the discipline of Native Studies. Its purpose is to increase the student's understanding and sensitivity towards the past and present experience of Native peoples. The course will examine precontact history; the influences of colonialism and primitive accumulation/capitalism in the postcontact era; and contemporary issues - while emphasizing a historical and materialist perspective.

This course looks at the traditional role of Native women within Native societies, and how that role has changed over time. It will examine the oppression that Native women have experienced, their responses to it, and the political, economic, social, and spiritual roles they have played both in their own struggles for liberation and in the struggles of their people. Will also look at the lives and voices of prominent Native women, and consider the development of Native women's organizations and the influences of feminism.

This course takes an analytical look at the invention of pseudo-traditions with a focus on indigenous nations in the context of a worldwide historical problem. Colonial and invader/settler powers destroy, romanticize, omit, distort, and replace indigenous traditions with hoaxes catering to the agendas of colonial/capitalist development. Often, these invented traditions destroy communal spirituality, beliefs, and lifeways, and replace them with new age individualist metaphysical beliefs. Case studies include the Scottish kilt, the medicine wheel originally based on the eugenic colours of man, animism, invented oral traditions, bloodlines, Chief and Council, and cuisine that is installed as a cultural trait. The course explores the problems of pan-Indianism, where traditions and ceremony from a specific indigenous nation is expanded into the traditional custom of all indigenous nations, including passing off another indigenous nation's lifeways as a the traditional government of another indigenous nation.

An analytical look at indigenous geographies / cartographies and European colonial cartography of the Americas and the world. Thematic topics include mapping techniques, materialist rationale behind the mapping of the world, and the abstract changes to the indigenous landscapes by European settler cartographers with the physical consequences of those changes. The course will conclude with an analysis of academic cartography and how scholars generalize / conceptualize indigenous geographies.

Focuses on the many historical and contemporary forms of Native resistance to colonization, including violent and non-violent resistance, revitalization movements, and self-determination. Explores liberation theory and its roots in colonial oppression. Analyzes historical and contemporary resistance movements such as the Ghost Dance Movement, the Riel Rebellion, the fish-ins, the confrontations at Wounded Knee and Oka, and the movement for decolonization through self-determination. Prerequisite: NATI 3603 or by special permission of the instructor.

The indigenous peoples of Canada are often included as an afterthought in academic works on racism, which tend to focus on Black-White relations. However, rather than being marginal to understanding the issues of race and racism, the early encounters between European and Native Americans are central to its proper understanding. The issues which arose from Columbus' explorations remain as central to understanding modern racism as they were to the creation of racist ideology in the first place, and the treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada today is shown to be a direct intellectual descendent of the material need to deny the humanity of other human beings.

A survey course that introduces students to the discipline of Native Studies. Its purpose is to increase the student's understanding and sensitivity towards the past and present experience of Native peoples. The course will examine precontact history; the influences of colonialism and primitive accumulation/capitalism in the postcontact era; and contemporary issues - while emphasizing a historical and materialist perspective.

This course is designed to introduce students to ethical issues that arise between the sciences (both social and physical) and indigenous peoples. Anthropology, education, psychology, archaeology, medicine, biology, and other disciplines follow lines of inquiry that impact indigenous peoples, and their theories, methods, interpretations, and interests are examined in relation to ethical considerations. We emphasize the concerns and point of view of Native people. The course may include issues of exhumation and public display of skeletal remains and sacred objects, control over access to information, the political relevance of research and its role in land claims, the ethics of assessment and drawing conclusions about the nature of indigenous peoples, and other topics.

What is accepted as scientific bases for existing pronouncements about Native peoples - made by educators, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and others - generally fail to pass even minimal analytic, ethical, and philosophical requirements for constituting valid findings. Regrettably, few people realize this: most importantly, Native Peoples themselves are agents of programs & policies supposedly based upon such research. This course will give students an introduction to the technical requirements needed to identify, as such, incorrect, racist, pseudo-scientific mischaracterizations of Native Peoples; in addition, they will learn the basics of conducting proper research themselves.

This course examines Native cosmologies (world views) and ways of thinking, feeling, and knowing as the foundation of indigenous spiritual, political, social, and economic systems. Defines the continuing existence and vitality of traditional Native philosophy and traces its influence on Western knowledge. Prerequisite: NATI 1006 or by permission of instructor.

An analysis of court decisions affecting questions of the status of Native peoples, Aboriginal rights, family law, treaty rights (as incorporated into settler nation-state laws), and social relations in Canada and the United States, including the Constitution Act, 1982. After a brief look at the 1876 Indian Act, the course will examine how the Act changed and evolved over time, in particular with the inclusion of the Inuit and with Bill C-31 on the status of women. Court cases from the 1888 St. Catharines Milling and Lumber Co v. 10 R. decision onward through the landmark Marshall decision (1999) will be analyzed and discussed.

The goal of this course is to familiarize the student with international legal norms and instruments as they relate to indigenous peoples, including Indians in Canada. Treaties between indigenous nations and European empires/settler nation-states are nation-to-nation agreements, and thus, international law, which will be discussed and analyzed. Various United Nations instruments will be studied. As well, this course will look at the history and law of various locations outside Canada such as: Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America, Norway, central and south America and southeast Asia. This course is designed as an upper year survey course.