Native American Studies (NATAMST)

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2022
This course introduces students to the genres of Native American literature (written and oral traditions), provides historical and cultural frameworks for understanding, appreciating, and interpreting Native American writings, and develops basic skills in expository and creative writing. Satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
Native American Studies Reading and Composition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Course examines Native American written and oral traditions in historical and cultural contexts. Emphasis on literary interpretation and creative and analytical writing, so that students increasingly write from positions of strength. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.
Native American Studies Reading and Composition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course explores the interactions, from friendship treaties and land deals to contemporary American governmental policies, between America's original inhabitants with Europeans and Euro-Americans. Emphasis will be placed on how tribal peoples continue to react to the national myths and policies created by Europeans and Euro-Americans.
Introduction to Native American Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course explores Native American identify practices in written and oral traditions in literature, art, dance, theatre, ceremony, and song. The place of these traditions in the contemporary day will be emphasized as creative struggles for maintaining and elaborating on Indian identity in the context of colonialism.
Introduction to Native American Studies II: Cultural Practice, Art, and Identity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
The course presents a diachronic perspective on human-fire interactions with local ecosystems in California that spans over 10,000 years. The course will provide an historical perspective on human-fire interactions at the landscape scale using a diverse range of data sources drawn from the fields of fire ecology, biology, history, anthropology, and archaeology. An important component includes examining how diverse cultures and ethnicity influenced how people perceived and used fire at the landscape scale in ancient, historical and modern times. The implications of these diverse fire practices and policies will be analyzed and the consequences they have had for transforming habitats and propagating catastrophic fires will be explored.
Fire: Past, Present and Future Interactions with the People and Ecosystems of California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2013
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023
The purpose of this course is to examine Native American societies, political systems, and human-environment relationships within CA and the U.S. This survey of Native American history will provide context for modern issues in land and resource management and government-to-government relationships between tribes and local, state, and federal agencies. Special attention will be given to the CA region, as there are many aspects of CA that make it an exceptional or unique case within the larger US historical narrative. Recurring themes or core concepts discussed throughout the course will include climate change, cultural and environmental impacts from colonialism,Indigenous persistence, stewardship, cultural landscapes, and tribal sovereignty.
History of Native American Land, Colonialism, and Heritage Preservation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2017
This course is for people who want to learn a Native American language, understood to include any of the hundreds of indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America. Since most of these languages are not taught in the usual formal educational settings, a major emphasis of the course is helping students develop strategies for self-directed language learning and effective teaching methods to help others learn as well. The course will also provide a basic introduction to principles of linguistic analysis that will make materials developed by specialists more accessible and useful to learners.

Working with Grammar: Linguistic Tools for Learning and Teaching a Native American Language: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
An ethnohistorical analysis of America's original inhabitants and their interactions with Europeans and Euro-Americans emphasizing an Indian perspective.
Native Americans in North America to 1900: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
A survey and analysis of issues affecting Native Americans in the 20th and 21st centuries. Course will explore political, economic, and social/cultural developments as they shape federal-Indian relations and tribal sovereignty.
Native Americans in North America 1900-Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This course examines the history of indigenous, aboriginal, native, or "tribal" peoples over the last five centuries. Particular attention is paid to how these groups were brought into relations with an expanding Europe, capitalist development, and modern nation-states. How have these peoples survived, what are the contemporary challenges they face, and what resources and allies have they drawn on in the present?
Indigenous Peoples in Global Inequality: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
The course will introduce students to different ways of understanding the history of American Indians and to basic resources and research methods for studying the history of Indian tribes.
Freshman Seminar--Myth, Memory and History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual conferences to be arranged. Supervised experiences relevant to specific aspects of the Native American community in off-campus settings. Regular individual meetings with faculty sponsor and written reports required.
Field Work in Native American Communities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Supervised research by lower division students.
Supervised Group Study and Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual conferences to be arranged. The individual student, with consent and guidance of an instructor, researches an interest not covered in the courses offered in the Program.
Supervised Independent Study and Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Historical background of the unique relationship between the United States government and Native American tribes, and examination of contemporary legislation, court cases, and federal, state, and local policies affecting Native American social, political, legal, and economic situations.
Native American Law: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
The roles of tribal governments in the formation of internal and external policies affecting the lives of Native American people, the basis for their political power historically and in contemporary society, and their structure and functions.
Native American Tribal Governments: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Key contemporary issues in the critical study of tribal and federal policy pertaining to American Indians and Alaska Natives in the U.S. Topics include political and cultural sovereignty; religious, gendered, sexual, racial, and other tribal minorities, and civil rights within tribes; Native legal identity and tribal enrollment; the role of violence against women in the history of colonialism, and the struggle for justice and healing; and the movement for traditional or other culturally appropriate forms for tribal self-governance.
Critical Native American Legal and Policy Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course addresses how Indigenous communities throughout the Americas deal with their contemporary political dilemmas. It explores the ways in which internal colonialism, projects of assimilation, political and economic marginalization, land loss, and resistance have affected how Indigenous people view themselves in relationship to the dominant societies in which they reside. It explores local differences, attentive to the specificity of the national or regional dimension of “the Indian Problem.” And it examines the varied and often complementary tactics that Indigenous people take in their pursuit of political and cultural self-determination.
Indigenous Issues Across the Americas: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Overview of literary theory and criticism, historiography, and social sciences theories and methods useful in the study of Native American literature, history and contemporary tribal groups. Course will develop skills of information gathering and development of theories that structure information.
Theories and Methods in Native American Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2008, Spring 2008
This course explores the practice of Native American art forms from the perspective of Native American Artists and scholars. Focused on specific art forms such as dance, music, film, crafts, and other traditions, this course provides a critique of conventional understandings of the relationships of Native American cultural traditions and their place in the world of "art."
Topics in Native American Arts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This course explores the development of photography, historical photographs of Indigenous peoples, Black Indians, and the push to win the American West. Central to the course are research methods that deconstruct stereotypical representations of Native Americans, African Americans (who either married into Native nations, were owned by Native peoples, or who joined the military to fight Native peoples), and the theories and methods that influenced photography.
Photography and the American Indian: Manifest Destiny, American Frontier, and Images of American Indians: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Spring 2012
This course explores the ways in which an invented, generic "Indian" has played a variety of roles in master narratives of United States history. We shall examine changes in images of key figures and events constituting "our" collective historical memory.
Images of Native Americans in American History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This course examines gender roles from the period before the invasion to the present. An emphasis will be placed on the ways in which contact with European gender practices transformed those prevalent in Native North American before the conquest.
Gender in Native American Society: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2019, Fall 2017
This workshop provides intensive study of the crafts of writing in relation to various Native American genres as well as writing and discussion of student work.
Native American Narratives: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
A study of the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of Native American world views, with emphasis on systems of knowledge, explanations of natural phenomena, and relations of human beings to nature through ritual and ceremonial observances.
Native American Philosophy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
An analysis of the written and oral tradition developed by Native Americans. Emphasis will be placed on a multifaceted approach (aesthetic, linguistic, psychological, historical, and cultural) in examining American Indian literature.
Native American Literature: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course will analyze the sociological, psychological, and literary aspects of Hollywood moviemakers' stereotyping of the American Indian through the history of film. The format will include representative Indian films, lectures, and guest speakers from the movie industry.
Native Americans and the Cinema: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1997 10 Week Session, Summer 1996 10 Week Session
This course will analyze the sociological, psychological, and literary aspects of Hollywood moviemakers' stereotyping of the American Indian through the history of film. The format will include representative Indian films, lectures, and guest speakers from the movie industry.
Native Americans and the Cinema: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1999 10 Week Session
This course considers Maya traditions as performance, oral literature, and creative resource which informs the present and the future. The course will illustrate the ways Maya mythic narratives are tied and untied in Maya cultural histories and geographies with close attention to contemporary use of the 260-day sacred calendar, creation accounts, ceremony, and the publically emergent role of the AjQ'ijab, the spiritual leaders.
Maya Traditions: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2017 3 Week Session, Summer 1999 10 Week Session
This course is a survey of contemporary Native American Indian art from the 19th century to the present. The general philosophical foundations of traditional tribal arts and culture will be discussed in the first week of the course. The second and third week of the course contemporary art will be studied through selected readings, slide presentations, and other reproductions of painting and sculpture by Native American Indian artists.
Native American Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1999 10 Week Session
This course is a general survey of competing environmental interests of Native American Indians. Sacred sites and stewardship of the environment will be discussed in the first week. The legacy of radioactive waste disposal on tribal land will be studied in the second week of the course. Lectures in the third week will consider mining and the pollution of air and water on treaty reservations.
Native American Environments: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1999 10 Week Session
This course will consider Native American Indian ceremonies through the introductory examination of diverse religious beliefs, practices, and performances. Among the topics discussed will be the role of healing practices, revitalization movements, and religious changes in tribal communities in North America. The lectures will compare various tribal philosophies and world views in the context of culture and history.
Native American Ceremonies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1999 10 Week Session
This introductory course will compare the general cultural themes and political histories of Native American Indians in California. The lectures in the first week of the course will consider demographic studies and the diversity of tribal cultures. The second week will review colonial dominance, mission activities, assimilation policies, and relations with the United States government. In the third week discussions will focus on the general political issues of tribal casinos in California.
Native Americans of California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 1999 10 Week Session
Native American Indians have been the cultural objects of photographers and the exotic figures of filmmakers for more than a century. Lectures in the first week will critique the images of Native American Indians in photographs. The second week will focus on selected scenes in motion pictures. General theories of simulation, historical and ethnographic representations will be considered in the third week. Students will read selected essays and view slides and scenes from films.
Native American Images: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2000 10 Week Session
This course will compare the general cultural themes and political histories of Native American Indian warrior cultures of the North American Great Plains, with an emphasis on the diversity of traditional cultural roles.
Plains Warriors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2000 10 Week Session
This course will explore the unique legal status of Native American Indian tribes and reservation lands in the United States, including discussions of treaties, federal trust relationships, and the evolution of laws and policies that determine sovereignty.
Native American Sovereignty: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2000 10 Week Session
This course considers the health of Native American Indian communities past and present. The lectures will be comparative and explore medical public health issues in urban areas and on reservations.
Medicine and Public Health: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course will examine the cultural history and contemporary political dynamics of First Nations in Canada. The lectures will focus on early encounters with natives recorded in , and on recent land claims and the Nunavut treaty.
First Nations in Canada: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
This course examines the history of indigenous, aboriginal, native, or "tribal" peoples over the last five centuries. Particular attention is paid to how these groups were brought into relations with an expanding Europe, capitalist development, and modern nation-states. How have these peoples survived, what are the contemporary challenges they face, and what resources and allies have they drawn on in the present?
Indigenous Peoples in Global Inequality: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
History of the Native Americans of California with emphasis on the lifeways, mores, warfare, and relations with the United States government. Attention will be given to the background and evolution of acculturation up to the present.
History of Native Americans in California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2012, Spring 2011
An historical analysis of the Native American Nations of the southwestern United States.
History of Native Americans in the Southwest: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course explores the history of Native Americans from the point of view of Native American historians and scholars. Focused on specific periods and regional case studies the course provides a rereading of much United States history as it has been conceived, set into periods, written, and taught. The chronological scope of the course begins before the European invasions and continues to the end of the 20th century.
Topics in Native American History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2010, Fall 2009, Fall 2008
This seminar will explore the intersections of Native American and African American histories and communities in the context of the United States which was formerly "Indian Country." We will read historical texts, first-person accounts, fiction, and primary documents primarily from the perspective of Native American, African American, and Black-Indian scholars and writers.
Africans in Indian Country: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course explores the dynamic relationships between indigenous communities and the continuously changing environmental landscapes of the North American West from before European contact to the present, and how these communities have continually adapted traditional cultural practices to meet ever-changing environmental realities. With this broader context, this course examines how specific indigenous communities have navigated their relationship with the natural world amidst the challenges of colonialism, globalization, environmental ruin, and climate change in the North American West. Additionally, this course highlights the active role of Native peoples in regional and environmental histories of the region.
Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Change in the North American West: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024
This course examines the history of indigenous, aboriginal, native, or "tribal" peoples over the last five centuries. Particular attention is paid to how these groups were brought into relations with an expanding Europe, capitalist development, and modern nation-states. How have these peoples survived, what are the contemporary challenges they face, and what resources and allies have they drawn on in the present?
Indigenous Peoples in Global Inequality: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
Advanced seminar in Native American Studies with topics to be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Seminar on Advanced Topics in Native American Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course is the first of the two-semester seminar required for the Native American Theme Program residents. This installment of the seminar component will build a general understanding of basic historical developments affecting Native and Indigenous peoples of North America, with a focus on Native American identity and contemporary issues from a variety of academic and philosophical standpoints, laying the groundwork for the spring seminar. Using an interdisciplinary lens that covers academic genres to memoir, the course will think critically and reflectively about Native American identity both historically and contemporaneously, and its intersections with gender, class, and other forms of difference.
Native American Theme Program Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course is the second half of the two-semester seminar required for the Native American Theme Program residents. This installment of the seminar uses builds on concepts from the fall semester to take a more in depth look at Native identity and community through Native scholars. Using an interdisciplinary lens that covers academic genres to memoir, the course asks students to think critically and reflectively about Native American identities in the academy, communities, activism and as well as in their own lives.
Native American Theme Program Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
Writing of a thesis under the direction of member(s) of the faculty.
Senior Thesis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Fall 2011, Spring 2011
The course will entail directed study and completion of an honors research project under the direction of a faculty committee. The project should have originated from a regularly scheduled course in the department.
Native American Studies Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
Course for senior Native American Studies majors designed to support and guide the writing of a senior honors thesis. For senior Native American Studies majors who have been approved for the honors program.
Senior Honors Thesis for Native American Studies Majors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Course for senior Native American Studies majors designed to support and guide the writing of a senior honors thesis. For senior Native American Studies majors who have been approved for the honors program.
Senior Honors Thesis for Native American Studies Majors: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Supervised fieldwork experience with campus and community organizations related to the vision and mission of Native American Studies. This University organized and supervised field program is an opportunity for students to think critically about the work of engaged scholarship through their participation a variety of community-based activities and events. Students will be required to meet regularly with a faculty sponsor and submit a final project.
Field Study in Native American Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
Individual conferences to be arranged. Group discussion, research, and reporting on topics by students.
Supervised Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Individual conferences to be arranged. The individual student, with consent and guidance of an instructor, researches an interest not covered in the courses offered in the Program.
Supervised Independent Study and Research: Read More [+]