Politics 345: Indigenous Politics

“It has been said that being born Indian is being born into politics.” -Gerald Taiaiake Alfred. America is an occupied space, structured by a logic of elimination. Indigeneity is the refusal to be eliminated. Whitman College is a part of that occupation, and yet we have an agreement with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, whose ancestors have lived on this land since “time immemorial”--long before the arrival of any American settlers. In this class we will spend a semester considering what that commitment can and should entail. Topics and themes include treaties, nation states, federal Indian law, Indigenous nationhood, boarding schools, education, monuments and memorials, queer Indigenous studies, MMIW, settler colonialism, blood, DNA, First Foods, Truth and Reconciliation, reparations, sovereignties, Indigenous futurities, critical indigenous studies, and more