The Native American Renaissance
Academic Responsibility: Dr Sam Hitchmough
Module Aims
This module aims to build upon the interdisciplinary foundation work on the Native American conducted in Year Two. Thus, students will be drawing their information on specific tribes and the broader picture of Indian-White relations from historical, political, literary, filmic, sociological and anthropological sources.
Module Content
The module focuses on the issues impacting Native American tribes since 1960, changing factors affecting their status and modes of creative expression and self-representation. The course aims to develop students' awareness of the significant events during the growth of the American Indian Movement (AIM), the struggle for sovereignty, land, water and fishing rights, and issues facing tribes today. Students are given lectures and set readings on issues for discussion in seminars focusing on the status and self-representation of the Native American since 1960.
The module opens with a broad historical and anthropological context, engaging students in individual and group work to encourage a critical and reflexive enquiry into cultural paradigms and tribal change within which the rise of AIM and the expression of Native rights can be analysed. Political and legal issues concerning land rights, in the face of White exploitation of the land for minerals and oil, are studied, as are fishing and water rights.
The impact of, and the response to, White values and Capitalist economy upon tribal societies and worldviews are examined through film, autobiography and literature. Responses to change and modernity in contemporary Native American life are dramatised in debate and role-play simulation so as to demonstrate the complexity of the issues.
Assessment
Students have a choice of either two assignments of 2500 words each or one assignment of 5000 words. There is no examination.