Overview

Increasingly, terms such as “colonialism,” “decolonization,” and “social structures,” appear in media, conversations, and educational spaces, often without nuanced explanations of these concepts and how they relate to current U.S. society and the individuals in it. To provide a space to think, learn, and feel about these concepts as realities connected to everyone, this course offers many entry points to deepen understandings about the U.S. as a current settler colonial nation, to engage with contemporary Indigenous Peoples/Native Nations, and to recognize how participants’ own lives, interests, and professional domains intersect with settler colonialism. This course highlights perspectives from Indigenous Peoples/Native Nations while focusing on examples of ongoing settler colonialism as it shows up in education, law, food systems, media, land, gender, race/ethnicity, and health/medicine, among others. Additionally, this course offers a framework consisting of four cornerstones that reveal how ongoing settler colonialism in the United States: 1) attempts to eliminate Indigenous Peoples, 2) imposes ideas of property, 3) produces anti-relationality, and 4) naturalizes the assumption of limited options. Through the framework + Native perspectives and knowledge, participants will better understand ongoing settler colonialism while (re)imagining anti-colonial processes in the U.S. as a way to co-create thriving futures for everyone. This Teach-Out does not issue certificates of completion.

Syllabus

MIYOONAKISHKATOOHK! (WELCOME!)
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' HOMELANDS: THE U.S. AS A SETTLER COLONIAL NATION

This module introduces the U.S. as a current settler colonial nation and guides participants in considering their own relationships (or lack thereof) with diverse and numerous Indigenous Peoples/Native Nations

THE ENDURING PRESENCE OF NATIVE PEOPLES AND SETTLER COLONIALISM’S ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE

This module provides the first cornerstone in understanding ongoing settler colonialism—the attempt to eliminate Native Peoples. Additionally, this module showcases the enduring presence of Native Peoples despite settler colonialism's ongoing attempts of erasure.

INDIGENOUS UNDERSTANDINGS OF LAND AND THE SETTLER COLONIAL IMPOSITION OF PROPERTY

This module provides the second cornerstone in understanding ongoing settler colonialism—the imposition of property, ownership, and possession. Furthermore, this module highlights pre-colonial (which are also current), Indigenous approaches to land, knowledge, and more-than-human relatives that are not rooted in ownership and possession.

CENTRALITY OF RELATIONSHIPS IN INDIGENOUS WORLDVIEWS AND SETTLER COLONIAL PRODUCTIONS OF ANTI-RELATIONALITY

This module outlines the third cornerstone in understanding ongoing settler colonialism—the production of anti-relationality via the erasure, damage, and unavailability of certain kinds of relationships between people, land, ideas, cultures, and more-than-human relatives. This settler colonial anti-relationality prioritizes principles of individualism, human-centeredness, and ownership/property. Additionally, this module demonstrates the centrality of meaningful relationships in Indigenous worldviews and the importance of interconnection, care, responsibility, collectivity, consideration, and reciprocity.

DREAMING OF ANTI-COLONIAL FUTURES DESPITE SETTLER COLONIALISM’S LIMITED OPTIONS

This module provides the fourth cornerstone in understanding ongoing settler colonialism—the naturalization (making it seem typical and unremarkable to all people in the U.S.) to have limited life options. Specifically, settler colonialism socializes individuals, families, and groups of people into assuming there are only certain settler colonial-approved ways—often singular, binary, or on a narrow spectrum—to learn, pray, create a family, love, participate economically, rest, eat, organize time, dress, govern, birth, die, attend to health, work, generate/share knowledge, be in relationships, conduct research, and so much more. Furthermore, this module highlights the expansive possibilities that exist for social configurations, governing, worldviews, and more that Indigenous knowledges and futures show us.