Image of Minnie Hollow Wood* courtesy of Monica Gilles-BringsYellow

Indigenous Resistance for Everyone

Course Syllabus

Overview

This 8-week online course will help participants develop their understanding of American Indian resistance to settler colonialism. A successful student possesses a fundamental understanding of Indigenous history and contemporary issues in the U.S. 

The course will incorporate reading/viewing and reflection questions as well as eight one-hour recorded zoom panels with guest speakers. Readings will be accessed via the course shell hosted on Thinkific. This course is self-paced. This means there are no set meeting times or dates, so you can access it at your convenience. The course opens one week at a time.

No college credit or educator renewal units will be offered for this course.

Recorded Webinars

Module 1: Bison and Land with Jill Falcon Ramaker (Anishinaabe) and Jason Baldes (Eastern Shoshone)

Module 2: Water Protectors with Bill Swaney (Salish/Kootenai) and Jen Harrington (Turtle Mountain Chippewa)

Module 3: Education as Resistance with Dr. Jason Cummins (Apsáalooke) and Robert Hall (Amskapi Pikuni)

Module 4: Wellness as Resistance with Giizh Howes (Anishinaabe) and Michelle Mitchell (Salish) and Robin Wall Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi Nation)

Module 5: Tribal Leadership, Treaty Rights with Gerald Gray, Jr. (Little Shell Chippewa) and Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz (Lumbee)

Module 6: Native Journalism with Waubgeshig Rice (Wasauksing First Nation), Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee) and “Toastie” Oaster (Choctaw).

Module 7: Community Organizing in development!

Module 8: Language Revitalization as Resistance with Waubgeshig Rice (Wasauksing First Nation), Robert Hall (Amskapi Pikuni) and Whitney TopSky (Cree).

Schedule 

Module 1

Bison Restoration and Land Reciprocity

What is reciprocity, and how does it underscore Indigenous relationships to land? What role have bison played historically and what role do tribal bison restoration programs have in restoring reciprocity?

Module 2

Water Protectors

How have federal and state policies and actions from dams to pipelines to fracking to sewage and dumps affected tribal water use, reciprocity practices, water quality, human and animal life and ceremony?

Module 3

Education as Resistance

From boarding schools as a tool to the erasure of Indigenous topics from mainstream curricula, education has long served as a tool of forced assimilation. How can education be used as resistance instead?

Module 4

Wellness as Resistance

From rotten rations to low-quality commodities to an underfunded Indian Health Services, health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations are broad. This module will investigate how mental and physical wellness is a form of resistance, and what tribal communities are doing to promote it, from nutritious food cultivation and preparation to policies that support wellness.

Module 5

Tribal Leadership, Treaty Rights, Federal Government

What do tribal leaders know, and need to do when working in consultation or negotiation with outside entities, to ensure their tribe’s treaty rights are upheld? What resources and guidance do they rely on?

Module 6

Native Journalism

When reporting on issues in Indian Country, journalists’ responsibilities often extend to resistance because these issues can arise from official policies that have negatively affected tribal communities. How do Native journalists learn about, provide helpful context for, and succeed at covering Indian Country?

Module 7

Food Sovereignty as Resistance / Plant Baby Plant

One way tribes have experienced damage is through poor nutrition brought on by colonization and the government-produced rations, then commodities, and now food deserts. Indigenous food experts and chefs and wellness professionals have responded by reintroducing Indigenous ingredients and food preparation approaches.

Module 8

Language Revitalization as Resistance

Culture and language interact inextricably with one another. Without language, there is no culture and vice versa. Activists have therefore worked within and across communities to revitalize Indigenous languages and in doing so, to preserve robust cultures. 

Course Materials/Readings

Anton Treuer: Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask, Revised and Expanded edition (2023). ISBN 1681342464

All other materials will be provided in the course shell, hosted on Thinkific.

Instructor Information

Anna East, Ed.D., was a high school teacher for 22 years on the Flathead Reservation. She now works at the Montana Digital Academy where she develops online Indigenous language courses and other services in partnership with the tribes of Montana. She is the founding director of Chickadee Community Services, a nonprofit organization supporting education projects by, about, and for Indigenous people. Her doctoral dissertation work focused on IEFA and professional development, and she offers teacher workshops statewide on this topic. Anna has been an adjunct professor at the University of Montana, UM-Western, and Dawson Community College and has offered undergrad and graduate courses in Native American Studies, Native American Literature, and Multicultural Education. She was a 2014 Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Distinguished Educator and the 2014 Montana Teacher of the Year.

*Minnie Hollow Wood (Lakota) fought the US 7th Cavalry alongside male warriors in the Battle of Little Bighorn. For this she earned the right to wear a warbonnet. She later married Hollow Wood (Northern Cheyenne).