This course explores indigenous identity as a global phenomenon created during the past 500 years of colonial expansion. Originally a category of oppression in colonial Latin America, and now widely used of term resistance to neocolonial and neoliberal economic reforms the world over, how does the category “indigenous” encourage transnational solidarity that crosses a number of linguistic, ethnic, and even racial borders? How are some “indigenous” identities always already constructed transnationally?
Beyond engaging with the theoretical perspectives offered by scholars such as Benedict Anderson, Maori Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Creek/Cherokee Craig Womack, in order to understand the multilayered global dialogues found in these literatures students in the course will read texts from several different literary and cultural traditions, including Native American, Canadian First Nations, and Latin American Indigenous perspectives.