AIIS Courses: Fall 2023

Professor Kurt Jordan

Mondays & Wednesdays, 12:20PM - 2:15PM

This seminar uses archaeology to examine engagements between settlers and indigenous peoples throughout world history. Archaeology provides a perspective on settler-indigenous encounters that both supplements and challenges conventional models.  We will assess the strengths and weaknesses of various theories of cultural engagement, examine methodologies, and explore a series of archaeological case studies, using examples from both the ancient world and the European expansion over the past 600 years. The seminar provides a comparative perspective on indigenous-colonial relationships, in particular exploring the hard-fought spaces of relative autonomy created and sustained by indigenous peoples.

Professor Robert Odawi Porter (Seneca)

Thursdays, 2:30PM - 4:30PM & Fridays, 10:10AM - 11:35AM

The course will focus on the basics of Federal Indian Law, the ever-changing body of case and statutory law and treaties that define the limits and extent of Indian tribal sovereignty in the United States in the late twentieth century. The course will explore the nature and extent of tribal sovereignty at the time of European contact, the changing strategies of the United States in relating to tribes, and the lasting impact of those strategies on current-day tribal communities and their rights of self-government. The course will also explore the role of the United States in protecting tribal sovereignty and tribal resources. It will also examine the powers and jurisdiction of tribal governments with regard to both members and non-members of the tribe, as well as the lack or extent, as the case may be, of state jurisdiction over activities on Indian lands. Students will be encouraged to continually identify and question the legal, political and moral basis of the laws and policies that constitute Federal Indian Law in the United States today. We will also examine the current ALI restatement project for Federal Indian Law.

Professor Jolene Rickard (Ska:rù:rę'/Tuscarora)

Wednesdays, 11:15AM - 1:45PM

Topic: Exposing Structural Inequities

Professor Eric Cheyfitz

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10:10AM - 11:25AM

If you haven't read contemporary U.S. American Indian fiction, then it might be fair to ask how much you know about the United States, its origins and its current condition. Since the 1960s, American Indians have been producing a significant body of award-wining novels and short stories. In 1969, for example, N. Scott Momaday, from the Kiowa nation, won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn and in 2012 Louise Erdrich, who is Anishinaabe, won the National Book Award for her novel The Round House. In between these two notable moments and since we can list an impressive number of Native storytellers whose work is aesthetically powerful, offering us a narrative of the United States that counters the official history. Centrally the course will focus on the various formal approaches Native writers take from surrealism to realism in representing the (post)colonial situation of Indian country and the ongoing resistance in Indian country to the U.S. legal and political regime.