DHIS 25A23 - Sacred Land: A History of Indigenous Resistance and Environmental Justice in the USA

Self-created as a “Republic of Nature”, The United States premised their experience on the bounty of the land, seen as a providential empty space with endless virgin forests, waters teeming with aquatic life, vast animal herds and abundant minerals. Settlers would make America out of the taming, “clearing” and toiling of such a limitless, God-given land. This class will explore how this historical construction of “Nature” and “land» required an “ecology of invasion” dispossession and forced migration, that irremediably disrupted Indigenous relationships to their environment. It has also shattered their modes of subsistence and erased and their traditional epistemology of land, resource, sovereignty, and life.

This course will help students develop a historical understanding of the ecological struggle for the “healing” of land and natural resources in the context of ongoing dispossession and injustice. It will explore, how aboriginal Americans (also named First Nations, Tribal groups, Indigenous People or Native-Americans) relentlessly reclaimed their land, opposed destructive extractive and industrial activities, and exposed the connectedness between violence to the earth and violence to Natives. Far from the trope of the “Indians in harmony with nature” this course will examine how their demand to preserve the ecological integrity of the land has been an act of political resistance. Ranging from History to Anthropology, Native-American Studies and Environmental History, this class will historicize indigenous vulnerabilities of extreme weather, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and pollution from manufacturing and resource extraction. We will engage in weekly conversations to unpack the ongoing struggle that indigenous and black communities have fought for the preservation of the right to bury their dead, breathe, and survive.

A general knowledge of North America and United States History