HIS2300 Global Environmental History
HIS2300_Syllabus_2021
This course sketches the history of human interactions with environments and non-human species over the last 10,000 years. Topics include the rise and expansion of agricultural societies, introduced species and extinctions, wilderness and conservation, climate change, the Industrial Revolution, and resource extraction. The course places environmental history in the context of settler colonialism, environmental racism, patriarchy, and the global history of capitalism. It gives students access to key readings, themes, and approaches to environmental history, and draws on work by scholars across disciplines. Students will strengthen intellectual and practical skills that can help all of us to live our lives in good relationship with each other and other creatures.

HIS3304 Canadian Environmental History
HIS3304_Syllabus2020
Environmental history is the study of the historical relationships between humans and the non-human world. This course explores the vibrant and growing field of Canadian environmental history, including themes such as wilderness, war, agriculture, industry, hunting and fishing, pollution, animal history, forestry, environmentalism, and invasive species. An important focus will be Indigenous perspectives on human-nature relations, and the ways in which Indigenous peoples and points of view have been undermined, to the long-term detriment of all. Students will critically engage with recent scholarship using chronological, regional, and topical frameworks; and will conduct various field observations and an environmental history research project of their own.

HIS4135 – EAS4110 Seminar in Canadian History – Selected Topics in Indigenous Studies – The Indian Act
HIS4135_IndianAct_Syllabus
The Canadian government first passed the consolidated Indian Act 1876 as the principal statute through which it governs First Nations communities. This seminar course considers how the Indian Act came to be, how it evolved over time, how First Nations attempted to shape it, and how they have been impacted by it. Students will read different iterations of the Indian Act itself, as well as a variety of texts that situate the Indian Act in Canadian history and in the global history of Indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism. Students will take an active part in leading discussions and will do a major research project.

HIS7338 Graduate Seminar on the History of Colonialism and Postcolonialism – Settler Colonialism
HIS7338_Syllabus2019
In the context of world history, settler colonial regimes worked to disenfranchise and dispossess Indigenous populations, replace them with settler populations, and set up institutional and cultural frameworks to justify or hide the ongoing violence of the process. This seminar examines the global phenomenon of settler colonialism from a historical perspective, and in relation to questions of empire, globalization, race, indigeneity, environment, law, class, and gender.

EAS4103 – Seminar in Indigenous Studies – Settler Colonialism and Law
EAS4103_Syllabus2021
This seminar-style course explores a wide range of questions around settler colonialism and law. We will read works on Indigenous legal thought and practice, as well as the roots, context, implementation, and impacts of colonial legal frameworks. Students will read a selection of academic and non-academic writing on these topics, and will engage themselves and each other in the classroom. They will also apply what they are learning in the context of a research project.

HIS4365 Selected Topics in History: Spatial History and Geographic Information Systems – University of Ottawa, 2016
Syllabus HIS 4365
GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is a tool used to collect, store, and analyse spatial data. A growing number of historians are using applying GIS to historical datasets (such as property records, diaries, and census data) and thus transforming them into different and useful forms of knowledge. This laboratory-style class introduces students to the fields of spatial history, critical cartography, historical geography, and environmental history through the use of GIS and ArcGIS software. The course is made up of two primary components: 1) a critical component, in which students engage with key works and ideas; and 2) a practical component in which students work with a historical dataset to create new cartographical visualizations. Students should emerge from the course with basic GIS skills and a good understanding of the field of spatial history.

HIS7338 Graduate Seminar on Indigenous Peoples and the Nation State – Law, Governance, and Modernity – University of Ottawa, 2015
Syllabus HIS 7338
This seminar course focuses on political and legal relationships between Indigenous peoples and nation states, in North American and around the world. Readings include historical work on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as theoretical works from other disciplines. Students will take an active part in leading discussions and will write an article-length research paper using primary sources from the fonds of the Department of Indian Affairs. Each paper will explore an aspect of relationships between the Canada and Indigenous peoples.

EAS1101A – Introduction to Aboriginal Societies and Cultures – University of Ottawa, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019
EAS1101A_Syllabus_2019

This course gives students the opportunity to expand and complicate their understanding of Indigenous peoples and colonialism through lectures, readings, guest speakers, films, small-group discussions, and a field trip.

The course objectives are:
• that students emerge with a strong knowledge of the history and present of settler colonialism and Indigenous history
• that students emerge having reflected deeply on their own place in the history and future of Indigenous-Settler relations
• that students emerge with the ability to engage respectfully and helpfully with Indigenous communities and work toward positive change in Settler communities

HIS3109 – The Six Nations: A History of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy – University of Ottawa, 2015
Syllabus HIST 3109
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations inhabited and dominated large parts of Northeastern North America long before European arrival, thrived as allies and enemies of some of the world’s most powerful empires, and continue to live throughout the region today. Their innovative political confederation is thought to be the oldest continuously operating democracy in the Americas, and influenced the framers of the United States constitution. This course begins with Haudenosaunee founding narratives and early history, continues through the complex relations with Dutch, French and British empires, and concludes with in-depth discussions of nineteenth and twentieth-century realities in the context of Canadian and US nation states. The year 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the Oka Crisis, which was one of many recent events that demonstrates Indigenous resurgence as well as the continuity of Canadian colonial relations. Drawing on an international literature on Indigenous communities and settler colonialism, this course places Haudenosaunee history in a global context. It includes the histories of communities on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, and covers diverse themes including warfare, migration, race, sexuality, art, language, spirituality, environment, and law. As a way of reflecting the diversity of Haudenosaunee peoples and the complexity of their history, the course incorporates guest speakers, site visits, films, and readings.

HIST 361 – The Canadian West – McGill University, 2014
Syllabus HIST 361
This course explores aspects of the last five hundred years of what is today known as Western Canada. The history of this region has often been told as if it were simply a story of progress from simplicity to complexity, from savagery to civilization, and from underdevelopment to development. This course takes another approach in that it recognizes Indigenous civilizations of the Canadian West as complete and developed societies that were devastated by settler invasions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That the Northwest became part of Canada at all was not a foregone conclusion, and this course examines the evolution of this region in all of its complexity. The course will focus heavily on topics related to Indigenous peoples and colonialism, but will also cover topics such as gender, fur trade, immigration, race, sexuality, art, language, religion and spirituality, geography, environment, and regional political movements and cultures.

HIST 223 – Natives of the Americas – McGill University, 2014
Syllabus HIST 223
HIST 223 is a non-exhaustive introduction to the history of Indigenous peoples in the western hemisphere and is designed to offer students samples of the histories of these societies and the colonialisms they experienced. The course addresses a number of themes through an investigation of questions relating to indigeneity and colonialism in the pre-contact and colonial periods, and introduces students to issues that still reverberate today. Seeing as this is an introductory course, it includes discussions about historical sources, methodologies, and academic writing.

QCST 440 – Contemporary Issues in Quebec: First Nations and Environments in Quebec / Les Premières nations et l’environnement au Québec – McGill University, 2010
Syllabus QCST 440
This course examines the relationships between First Nations and environments in Quebec, paying particular attention to how these relationships have been challenged by colonialism and relations with the state and non-native communities. From the sixteenth-century fur trade to contemporary land claims and the challenges brought about by climate change and hydro-electric development, native peoples of Quebec continue to struggle to assert their right to govern their own territories and make use of their environments as they see fit. This course adopts an historical perspective to better understand the contemporary opportunities and challenges facing First Nations as they advance land claims, co-manage natural resources with provincial and federal government agencies, and make use of local environments to secure sustainable futures for their communities. The approach is multi-disciplinary, drawing upon scholarship in anthropology, ecology, history, geography, and law. Topics to be discussed may include, but are not limited to, hunting economies, native agriculture, traditional ecological knowledge, territoriality, land claims, the role of the courts, relationships with the environmental movement, and the impact of government policy. The format of the course relies heavily upon guest speakers drawn from a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds.

CDNS 4622 – Les Premières nations et la nation canadienne : questions en études autochtones / First Nations and the Canadian Nation: Topics in Indigenous Studies, Glendon College, York University, 2013
Syllabus CDNS 4622
The historical relationships between Indigenous nations and Canada have often been described as colonial: characterized by asymmetrical power relations, dispossession, and attempted assimilation. Many Canadians believe that they have now left this colonial legacy behind and have entered a new era of partnership and reconciliation. Others argue that little has changed and that the relationship is still much as it has been for 150 years. This seminar-style course examines this question by investigating a diverse set of topics in Indigenous studies including: territory and land claims, languages and lifeways, law and governance, activism and social movements, literature and film, gender and race, history and sovereignty. The course aims to engage students in various ways by integrating scholarly texts from several disciplines, films, news media, primary historical documents, guest speakers, and field trips.

Les relations historiques entre les nations autochtones et le Canada ont souvent été décrites comme des relations coloniales caractérisées par les relations de pouvoir inégales, l’usurpation des terres et les tentatives d’assimilation. De nombreux Canadiens estiment aujourd’hui avoir laissé derrière eux cet héritage colonial et être entrés dans une nouvelle ère de partenariat et de réconciliation. D’autres soutiennent que peu de choses ont changé et que la relation demeure plus ou moins telle qu’elle était au milieu du XIXe siècle. Ce cours se penche sur cette question en examinant plusieurs sujets reliés aux études autochtones, y compris les questions du territoire et des revendications territoriales, des langues et des conceptions du monde, du droit et de la gouvernance, du militantisme et des mouvements sociaux, de la littérature et du cinéma, du genre et de la race, de l’histoire et de la souveraineté. Le cours vise à faire participer les étudiants de différentes manières en intégrant au matériel à l’étude des textes scientifiques de plusieurs disciplines, des films, des nouveaux médias, des documents historiques primaires, des conférenciers invités et des excursions sur le terrain.