2026-27 Indigenous Related Courses

This course examines fame and media in contemporary culture through Indigenous frameworks. Foregrounding relational and place-based understandings of fame and status, the course invites participants to reconsider what it means to be seen, remembered, or known. Students will read foundational texts in fame and (new) media studies alongside critical Indigenous scholarship and stories from oral traditions. Drawing on these readings, students will analyze and challenge dominant American narratives of fame, status, and media culture and develop alternative frameworks for understanding visibility, gaze, attention, public memory, and (im)mortality, especially in the digital age.

Not offered in 2025-26

This course explores the legal, cultural, and environmental foundations of Tribal and Indigenous environmental stewardship and natural resource management. Students will examine the historical significance of treaties, Tribal sovereignty, and federal trust responsibility, as well as key laws that have shaped Tribal resource use. The evolution of Tribal co-management with federal and state agencies will be analyzed through case studies, highlighting challenges and successful partnerships. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous worldviews on land stewardship will complement critical discussions on climate change, environmental justice, and the ongoing balance between economic development and ecological sustainability in Tribal resource use. 

Carleton’s new campus land acknowledgement affirms that this is Dakota land, but how did Carleton come to be here? What are the histories of Indigenous faculty, students, and staff at Carleton? In this course, students will investigate Indigenous histories on our campus by conducting original research about how Carleton acquired its landbase, its historic relationships to Dakota and Anishinaabeg people, histories of on-campus activism, the shifting demographics of Native students on campus, and the histories of Indigenous faculty and staff, among others. Students will situate these histories within the broader context of federal Indian policies and Indigenous resistance.

Not offered in 2025-26

This course examines the role of theatre in envisioning and enacting social change in the United States. Students will analyze the dramatic texts, live performances, and manifestos of influential theatre artists from the 1960s to today. Throughout the term, students will also practice embodied learning through theatre games, improvisational activities, and devised theatre-making. 

When did humans first migrate to North America? How long have people lived in Minnesota? This course will examine the material culture of Indigenous peoples throughout the North American continent above Mexico, from c. 20,000 years ago to present. Cultural groups include the Inuit, Iroquois, ancient Puebloans, Cahokia, Great Plains villages, and Pacific Northwest (Kumash) peoples. We will study Indigenous oral histories, genetic data, linguistics, material remains, and ethnohistorical accounts to examine migration, trade, and contact, with an emphasis on decolonization and Indigenous archaeologies.

Not offered in 2025-26

This era of local, state, and national pushback against policies and practices of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” provides us with an opportune moment to examine the possibilities and limitations of this framing as a pathway for educational justice. Drawing on critiques of liberal frameworks of educational equity by Indigenous scholars and scholars of color, this course will ask what educational justice might look like beyond representation and belonging, especially in higher educational institutions.

Recommended Preparation: One 100-level Educational Studies course.

Is there such a thing as American cuisine? Can it exist outside of the United States? Who defines, creates, and eats it? This course examines perceptions of American food within historical and global contexts. We will look at the relationship between evolving definitions of American food and immigration patterns, global food distribution networks, travel and tourism, foreign policy and war, and labor and public health. Topics range from U.S. military commissaries and ethnic groceries to Parisian soul food restaurants and the adaptation of SPAM into Filipino cuisine. Reading proficiency in a language other than English welcomed.

Not offered in 2025-26

This course examines imperial rule in the Andes under both Inca and Spanish rule. Indigenous intermediaries will be highlighted throughout, including the ethnic lords (kurakas) who mediated the competing interests of their communities and the state, as well as the indigenous and mestizo writers who drew from Andean and European traditions to craft a new kind of history of the Andes and the Inca dynasty. Visions of the Inca past and the strategies of survival developed by ethnic lords and communities during Spanish rule will inform our study of the Great Andean Rebellion, which foreshadowed the Latin American wars of independence by a generation.

Not offered in 2025-26

This course explores the archaeology of the Arctic with a primary focus on North America. Using archaeology, ethnohistory, and Indigenous knowledge, we examine settlement patterns, social organization, and ideologies of the Inuit and pre-Inuit peoples across the modern territories of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Who were the first inhabitants of this challenging region? How did they come there and why? How are they similar (or not) to other Arctic populations? We also highlight the importance of community-based archaeology, Inuit traditional knowledge, and the intertwined trajectories of archaeology and climate change, which define a new age of Arctic archaeology.

Not offered in 2025-26

Many Americans grow up with a fictionalized view of Indigenous people (sometimes also called Native Americans/American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians within the U.S. context). Understanding Indigenous peoples’ histories, presents, and possible futures requires moving beyond these stereotypes and listening to Indigenous perspectives. In this class, we will begin to learn about Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Pacific through tribal histories, legislation, Supreme Court cases, and personal narratives. The course will focus on the period from 1887 to 2018 with major themes including (among others) agency, resistance, resilience, settler colonialism, discrimination, and structural racism.

Not offered in 2025-26

For many Indigenous peoples, land is a relative, a teacher, and a source of knowledge. This seminar examines Indigenous relationships with land through the writings of Native authors, scholars, and activists, exploring Traditional Ecological Knowledge, stewardship, and environmental challenges. We will consider how Indigenous knowledge informs responses to climate change, land use, biodiversity loss, and other environmental threats, while also recognizing land and non-human beings as active participants in cultural and ecological systems. Through a reading-group format, discussions will foster critical reflection and connections to broader environmental issues. Students will also conduct an independent research paper, applying course themes to a focused topic of inquiry.

Far from being a single entity, America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a world of vibrant, polyglot, globally linked, and violent societies. What was it like to live in this vast world of early America? How did the people who lived there respond to their rapidly changing circumstances? How and why did some people resist and others revolt? This class will particularly focus on how ordinary people – free and enslaved, male and female, immigrant and indigenous – argued over conflicting expectations and hopes in a newly-colonized world.

Not offered in 2025-26

Even while still on the campaign trail, Spain’s conquistadors endeavored to describe Mexico's native societies to other Europeans. Thus began a centuries-long fascination with all things Mesoamerican, real and imaginary. This course explores how the Mesoamerican past has been imagined by indigenous and non-indigenous people. Potential subjects include Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, early Mexican nation-builders and artists, professional and pseudo-archaeologists, apocalyptic doomsayers, promoters of the Mexican tourist industry, and the counterculture and Chicano movements of the 1960s. Importantly, we will also consider how Mexico's indigenous groups have come to understand their own past from the time of Spanish rule to the present day.

Not offered in 2025-26

This is an advanced multidisciplinary research seminar on contemporary Latin America. New forms of political populism, indigenous understanding of the relationship between human and non-human forms of being, transformative urbanistic solutions at work in its largest cities, the political economy of migration, and vibrant cultures of protest, will be among our topics of study. Ideal for students going to or returning from study abroad in Latin America. Required course for minors and majors in Latin American Studies.

Not offered in 2025-26

Through films, short stories and novels, we analyze how plants like ayahuasca, peyote, and coca are at the intersection of exploitation, psychedelia, sacred practices and ecological awareness. We examine how the representations of plants in literature and cinema address biopiracy, colonialism, and the commodification of sacred plants. Also, we will study how indigenous communities preserve ancestral knowledge and resist environmental destruction. Students will critically reflect on the connections between storytelling, plant-based medicine, and contemporary environmental challenges in Latin America and beyond.