Syllabus
Topics: 1 Introduction; America before Contact 2 Ethics and Methodology; Native American history to 1830 3 Trails of Tears: Indian Removals, 1815 – 1845 4 How the West Was Lost: Reservation System and Indian Wars, 1845 – 1886 5 Wounded Knee and the Myth of the Vanishing Indian 6 “Americanizing” the American Indian: Surviving Assimilation 7 Winds of Change: Seeds of Reform, the Indian New Deal, Native Americans and WWII 8 Termination, Relocation, Urbanization, 1945 – 1960 9 The Struggle for Sovereignty, 1961 – 1980 10 Transnational Indigenous Activism 11 We Are Still Here: Renewal since 1980 12 Contemporary Issues
Annotation
This course is designed to introduce students to the major events, issues, and themes in Native American history from 1830 to the present day. The goals of the class are to show the diversity of Native histories and cultures, but also the shared experiences that have shaped them over time, and to introduce basic concepts such as self-determination, sovereignty, and treaty rights.
We will focus on the themes of resiliency and survival and the American Indians as active participants in their own past. Due to time restraints, the course will focus on the lower forty-eight United States, with some examples from Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada.