HIST 215: Integrated Indigenous Studies: Attempted Cultural Extermination
Credits 5This course will examine the historical interplay during The Assimilation Era, from the 1870's to 1970's, between the colonizing instincts of the US Federal Government to "kill the Indian in him, to save the man" and indigenous impulse toward self-determination that tribes had exerted since time immemorial. The US Government used legislation and treaties to force children into Boarding Schools, and later into adoption as a conscious effort at indigenous cultural genocide. It will employ legal history to examine how tribes embodied self determination by fighting these genocidal practices in courts. The course will engage social and cultural history to learn how tribes and tribal members have continually renewed and revived the cultures the government was trying to eradicate through complex cultural educational systems. Finally we will engage psychological and philosophical history to assert understanding of historical trauma, and how indigenous informed educational philosophies have represented a practice of healing. This class may include students from multiple sections.