NAIS 30.12 Native Americans of the Southwest: Realities and Representations
The course focuses on the past and present cultures of the Rio Grande Pueblos, Navajos (Dine), Apaches (Inde), Zunis, and Tohono O'odham, and explores such issues as spirituality, language and culture, environment and landscape, kinship and sociopolitical organization, cultural continuity and change, and sovereignty. It also looks at how American visitors, residents, and anthropologists have imagined, understood, and represented these Native people in a variety of ways. Both the biases and insights of their perspectives are discussed and compared with the ways that indigenous tradition-bearers, activists, and academic scholars have represented their own cultures through storytelling, visual arts, museum displays, and various forms of writing.