ANTHR 7725

American Indian Lands and Sovereignties

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

The relationship between North American Indian peoples and the states of Canada and the US is in many ways unique, the product of centuries of trade compacts, treaties, legislation, warfare, land claim negotiations, and Supreme Court (both US and Canadian) decisions. Those trying to make sense of the cross-cultural terrain of Indian-State relations find that apparently straightforward political and legal concepts such as "land," "property," "sovereignty," and "identity" often seem inadequate, based as they are on European cultural assumptions. These terms tend to take on new - and often ambiguous - meanings in the realm of Indian-State relations. In the first part of this course, we will explore some of these ambiguous meanings, paying attention to the cultural realities they reflect and the social relationships they help shape. In the second part of the course, we will get a sense of the complex interplay of legal, political, and cultural forces discussed earlier in the semester by taking an in-depth look at several selected case studies.

When Offered Fall.

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