Native American Studies (NAT) Spring 2023 Courses

Linked course titles have extended descriptions. Syllabi provided where available.

Course	Title	Day	Time	Instructor	Room	Syllabus	Description
NAT 300 M002	Native American History: 1830 - Present	T, TH	9:30 AM - 10:50 AM	Aaron Luedtke	Eggers Hall 018		This course is part two of the Native North American Survey. Beginning with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, this course will take a chronological approach to Native North America to understand how major historical events and themes connect the past to the present. This is mostly a discussion-based course with major topics including Native sovereignty and self-determination, forced removal, forced assimilation, the Red Power movement, Landback, Native repatriation, and other forms of Native resistance and cultural perseverance.
NAT 300 M003	Indigenous History and Culture through Film and Literature	T, TH	11:00 AM - 12:20 PM	Aaron Luedtke	Eggers Hall 113		This course explores the history of representations of Native Americans and their culture in popular media by both Native and non-Native peoples. Through analyses of both films and literature, this course will investigate major several major themes that affect Native people in the present-day such as colonialism, erasure, survivance, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, forced assimilation and boarding schools, the myth of the vanishing Indian, and Natives dealing with a post-apocalyptic future. The course will be accompanied by a weekly film viewing series where we watch movies from several different genres, mostly written and produced by Native filmmakers.
NAT 300 M004	Decolonial Feminism	M, W	2:15 PM - 3:35 PM	PJ DiPietro	Marshall Square Mall 208A
NAT 302	Iroquois Verb Morphology II			Percy Abrams	Online		Part of the Certificate in Iroquois Linguistics sequence
NAT 306	Iroquois Syntax and Semantics			Percy Abrams	Online		Part of the Certificate in Iroquois Linguistics sequence
NAT 400 M001	Indigenizing Museums	T, TH	11:00 AM - 12:20 PM	Sascha Scott, Scott Manning Stevens	Eggers Hall 018		This interdisciplinary course will be co-taught by Prof. Scott Stevens (Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program) and Prof. Sascha Scott (art historian) and will focus on museums that have collections of Indigenous visual and material culture. We will study the contested histories of these museums, including how they came to such possess their collections. We will learn about major critiques of these museums overtime and about present-day interventions that seek to indigenize museums. We will also learn about Indigenous cultural centers that have long offered alternatives to traditional museums. This course will include visits to museums and Indigenous cultural centers. Four class sessions will be led by Prof. Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora Nation) from Cornell University. Prof. Rickard will discuss her work as an artist, curator, and cultural critic, and will give a public lecture on exhibitions as a form of Indigenous activism.
NAT 400 M002/NAT 600 M001	Indigenous Research Methodologies	W	9:30 AM - 12:15 PM	Mariaelena Huambachano	Eggers Hall 018		Research has been a powerful tool of colonization. For centuries we have witnessed the dismissal of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and agency in academia and policy making. However, times are changing, and we are experiencing a re-emergence of cultures and civilizations historically undermined by global coloniality. We (speaking as one of them) are not only aware of the need to bring Indigenous methodologies into higher education and the research arena to enhance social justice and human rights. But are developing Indigenous-centered research frameworks that are more attentive to Indigenous ways of being, knowing, cultural protocols, and modes of inquiry. This course provides you with the foundation to develop a research framework that resonates with Indigenous ways of acquiring, sharing, and disseminating knowledge. I’ll show you how innovative Indigenous research methodologies contribute to social justice. Although broad in cultural and geographic scope, the course does not attempt to summarize the various knowledge production of cultures worldwide. Instead, we will focus on learning Indigenous epistemology, ontology and axiology (ethics), primarily focusing on Oceania (Aotearoa New Zealand), North America (United States), and Latin America (Peru).
NAT 400 M003/NAT 600 M002	Food Fights and Treaty Rights	W	2:15 PM - 5:00 PM	Mariaelena Huambachano	Life Sciences 200		Food has culture, history, and stories. This course will take you on a thrilling journey of exploring the larger international context of food politics, tribal sovereignty, and treaty making between Native communities in the U.S. and other Indigenous peoples living in settler-colonial societies such as Aotearoa New Zealand, and Peru. This class explores food security, food sovereignty, and international treaties as seen through an Indigenous lens. It positions them within an Indigenous framework of “reIndigenizing” foodways and diets to demonstrate its potential for strengthening tribal autonomy and supporting health and community wellness. We will critically discuss environmental justice, food justice, culinary colonialism, well-being, and the role of Indigenous peoples’ philosophies of living well in moving forward with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
NAT 461/NAT 661	Museums and Native Americans	T, TH	9:30 AM -10:50 AM	Heather Law Pezzarossi	Eggers Hall 113		This course provides an overview of the contested relationships extant amongst Native North Americans and museums from the founding of the settler colonial states of Canada and the United States, until the present. After briefly considering the contact period we will turn our attention to the social philosophies underlying “salvage” ethnography, and the collection of all forms of Native American culture (material as well as immaterial) and human remains. Issues of representation will be discussed within the framework of touring groups, fairs and expositions, as well as 20th c. museum exhibitions. The remainder of the course will focus on the shifts in power regarding ownership and representation evidenced by passage of the Native Americans Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), growing concerns over intellectual and cultural property, and new ethics of museum exhibition. The end of the course focuses heavily on Indigenous controlled heritage exhibits, and Native self-representation.