Indigenous Ecologies: Thinking with Indigenous Worldviews

3 Credits.

Indigenous people represent an important share of planet Earth’s inhabitants. Totaling almost 500 million people in the entire world, Indigenous people speak a variety of languages, produce knowledge in their mother tongues, and have deep connections to their lands and cultures. However, neither their demographic significance nor their long histories spared them the tragedies of settler colonialism and its aftermaths of dispossession, exclusion, and segregation. Since the early twentieth century, Indigenous people have been at the helm of a Global Indigeneity Movement that has mobilized both scholarship and activism in search of a better world. Despite their best efforts, the rich histories of indigenous activism, environmental practices, and cultural production as well as the worldviews they sustain remain confined to very limited circles. Building on the notion of "indigenous ecologies," which spans a wide range of approaches and fields, this course will interrogate some of the salient questions related to activism, literature, translation, extraction, environmentalism, and social justice from the perspective of Indigenous creators. Students will engage with materials produced by Indigenous thinkers, filmmakers, activists, and academic scholars to gain a deeper understanding of indigeneity across cultures and continents as well as the myriad critical ways in which its proponents approach pressing issues that face Indigenous peoples from myriad perspectives and positionalities.