Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An examination of fact and ideology in history and historic events involving contact between Indigenous and European peoples. The course will also address questions of research methodologies in studying Indigenous/European relations, such as the evaluation of oral history and written ethnohistoric sources. An additional focus will be on gender as it influences perspectives. Students with credit for FNST 201W may not take this course for further credit. Writing/Breadth-Social Sci.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course examines fact and ideology in history and historical events involving contact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in Canada.  We will address questions of research methodologies in studying Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations, such as the evaluation of oral history and written ethno-historic sources. An additional focus will be on the intersection of race, class, and gender as it influences perspectives, particularly the impact on Indigenous women. We will examine the historical relationship between Indigenous People and Europeans, centring our discussions around concepts of colonization and settler colonialism, while also exploring Canadian Indigenous Peoples’ contemporary responses to historical representations.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

• Develop and value the perspectives that come with one’s position.
• Develop the skills of close reading in order to assess a wide variety of sources and genres from autobiography, fiction—including graphic novels, documentary film, journalism, and academic writing.
• Develop research skills to add context to readings, in order to assess how effectively a source includes or values Indigenous perspectives.
• Write analysis effectively and persuasively.
• Assess how historical writing, while presented as objective and scientific, has also been driven by political motivations and culturally and socially based assumptions.
• Critically understand the concept of historiography and how historians present and analyze information about events and processes of the past, in particular as it is relevant for understanding the writing of Indigenous peoples' history.
• Be able to assess a spectrum of sources by Indigenous peoples from oral traditions, interview, film to written sources in a variety of genres.
• Appreciate the culture-specific ways in which Indigenous Elders talk(ed) about their pasts and tell their histories and stories.
• Understand and critically assess current concerns of Indigenous peoples in Canada about having their own representations of their pasts validated by the Canadian political and legal system.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

All assigned readings and materials will be available on Canvas, either as pdfs or by a link to the resource.

REQUIRED READING NOTES: