Introduction





ANT 221 Native Peoples of North America is a course designed to introduce students to the diversity of Native American cultures and histories. To illuminate these cultures we will read a series of texts, some written in the last century and others written more recently. In order to understand these texts, and to make sense of them, we will have to develop a context for reading Native American literature. As such, we have to cast a wide net to investigate many different aspects of Native American society. Our geographic range is the whole continent of North America, and our temporal range is the beginning of Native American cultures some11,000 years ago up to and including the present. If you do not know much about Native American society, history or culture, this course should provide you with the basics. As you deepen your understanding of Native American culture, you should also broaden your experience of the depth and richness of Native American life.

Although representing only a small minority of the American population today, the contributions of Native Americans to our life and culture are enormous. We will find that the ways we think about Native Americans will change as we overcome existing stereotypes, and develop a more informed understanding of these people and their cultures.

To make the course more interesting, and to allow you to follow (to some extent) your own interests, I have developed several different ways in which you can broaden your knowledge of Native American societies and cultures. First, I am using this wiki as an experiment. It allows me (and you) to upload word files, adobe files, powerpoint, excel and other kinds of files so you can always find them. For example, if you lose your syllabus, you can simply download a copy from this wiki. It will always be there. If you need to refresh your reading of a file I have posted here, you can simply read it online or download and print it.

The wiki also allows me to provide you with some links to informative web sites that you can use as jumping off points to explore different aspects of Native American life and literature. These links are intended to provide you with information you can use to make responses to the webquests I have developed for this course.

A word on Webquests:

There are eight webquests associated with this course. Each webquest,once completed, will provide you with a substantial piece of information relating to Native American culture. A webquest is simply atask that asks for specific pieces of information which you gather by visiting different websites (some of which I link you to others you find on your own). The benefits of a webquest are: you find, read,absorb and understand the information you gather, thus developing your own knowledge about a particular theme or issue. The information you gather will be useful to you in the following ways. First, you will be able to study your completed webquests to answer quizzes I set you in class. (If you do not complete the webquest, or do a poor job of gathering the information, you will not do well on the quizzes.) Second, as you complete the webquests you will be establishing a foundation of understanding about Native American culture and history,which you will use to interpret and enrich your reading of the texts we will study in this class.