JSIS 498 C: Digital Stories, Indigeneity and the Environment
Indigenizing the Jackson School
New Courses
While incorporating Indigenous knowledge into existing courses is an important and necessary step to introduce all Jackson School students to Indigenous cultures, adding new courses focused specifically on these topics is also important. A new course, functioning as a collaborative learning opportunity with Washington's Indigenous communities, serves to provide students with an Indigenous-led and -taught an understanding of Indigenous cultures.
We suggest developing a course focused on experience-based learning through traveling to local Coast Salish communities in which tribal leaders and elders would be involved in course development and teaching.
Courses similar to these exist at universities in Australia and New Zealand, but also in one of our neighboring institutions: University of British Columbia (UBC). UBC’s PLAN 321: Indigeneity and the City offers a “place-based exploration of the multiple, complex and contested ways urban Indigeneity is constituted in Canada today, with opportunities to attend community events and hands-on learning.”
Objectives of the course include:
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Introduce students to the federal/provincial/municipal policy frameworks that both removed Indigenous peoples from urban areas while radically transforming life on lands “reserved for Indians.”
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Familiarize students with Indigenous geographies and how colonization impacted Indigenous relationships with the land and land-based practices.
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Encourage students to think critically about how urban spaces are conceived and designed. Whose history is reflected in the urban structure. Who has access to these spaces, spatial practices and how is that access mediated? In what ways have Indigenous peoples always maintained their presence in urban areas?
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Familiarize students with the concept of a “strengths-based lens,” particularly as it relates to past and present activism, and ongoing acts of resurgence.
Various courses at UW deal with some of the themes and content of this class, but few if any involve actually traveling to and spending time within Indigenous communities and studying under the mentorship of tribal elders. We believe such a study abroad class would help to make Indigenous communities less abstract and forge the kinds of lived experiences and relationships that would help to build stronger coalitions and allyships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Washington.