Anth 897-058 Fall 09

Fall 2009

Anthropology Graduate Seminar

Professor Valerie Lambert

Monday  9:30am - 12:15pm  Dey Hall 205

(note change in originally-scheduled day and time)

Anthropology 897-058:  Institutions, Indigeneity, and Identity

Schools, governments, courts, churches, and other formal institutions have canalized the experiences and identities of the indigenous peoples of North and South America in myriad ways.  Such institutions have been agents of Native disempowerment and dispossession; they have also been tools for Native-driven sociopolitical change and transformation.  This course will begin by critically examining the ways federal and tribal boarding schools for American Indians have shaped Native experience and foregrounded issues of culture and cultural transformation.  We will then consider tribal debates over the meaning and definition of “culture” and “tradition” with an emphasis on the ways Christian churches and non-Christian Native religious institutions have helped shape the content and character of these debates.  Moving to an examination of broader issues of Native self-determination and sovereignty, we will consider not only the role of schools, churches, and tribal governments in crafting Native visions of the future but also the ways federal recognition and Native resistance to the racialization of Indian identity both negatively and positively impact Native social and political aspirations.  Finally, we will consider the possibility and potential of organized, grassroots political mobilization and the pursuit of the twin goals of local empowerment and broader social change through system-wide restructurings of the institutions that undergird society.

Email: vlambert@unc.edu