American Indian Treaties: Historical and Contemporary Analysis

“American Indian Treaties: Historical and Contemporary Analysis” is a 4-credit course designed for students to explore the historical inception of treaties between American Indian Tribes and the United States federal government. Students will be guided through the basic foundations of the historic treaty-making process with Tribes while studying how the treaties have been used to the detriment of Tribes and the modern legal and political interpretation of the treaties. It will examine how these treaties functioned both in the past and how they continue to form the basis for asserting Tribal sovereignty today. The course will also examine Indigenous perspectives of these matters to articulate the continuing political agency of Indigenous Peoples in what is now the United States that has existed since time immemorial. Students in this course will utilize digital tools such as textual analysis and mapping applications to analyze treaties and related documents to better grasp the patterns and meanings behind these documents through visualization so as to develop novel interpretations.