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Global Indigeneities
ANTH 318
Fall 2018 not offered

This course focuses on theories of indigeneity in examining indigenous peoples' lives, cultural practices, resistance and activism. The term "indigenous" has had varied and contested genealogies across time, geography, political contexts, and fields of study. Although dominant societies tend to claim that indigenous peoples are either entirely extinct due to genocide or diluted due to racial and cultural mixing, indigenous refers to the wide range of relations to region and nation of the more than 370 million indigenous people who are spread across 70 countries worldwide. Some indigenous peoples define themselves by their historical continuity with precolonial and presettler societies; others by ties to territories and surrounding natural resources; others in relation to distinct social, economic, or political systems; and still others by their distinct languages, cultures, and beliefs. Attempts at the historical erasure and subsequent memorialization of indigenous peoples serve the colonial goals of refuting indigenous claims to land and rights and have been the primary means by which dominant populations asserted their own modernity while denying it to putatively "primitive" indigenous peoples. Today, nation-states continue to impose this notion of the "pre-modern" savage as a mechanism of control in their negotiations with indigenous peoples' legal status and land rights. This course will focus on a range of cases studies including indigenous peoples in North America contending with the states of Canada, the United States, and Mexico; Indigenas encompassed by select countries in South America; Aboriginal peoples in Australia, the Sami (across various countries in Scandinavia), the Ainu (Japan), the Maori (New Zealand), and Palestinians (Israel-Palestine). Topics will include indigenous peoples' struggles for autonomy and survival; self-determination and political status under international law; the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; land struggles and the protection of natural resources; cultural resurgence and revival of select traditions; and varied forms of political resistance and decolonization.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS ANTH
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ANTH)

Last Updated on JUL-21-2019