Undergraduate courses

Course description

Over the generations, Indigenous identities, lifeways, and worldviews have shaped and been shaped by deep connections to ancestral territories, traditions and homes. These connections are expressed through language, song, ritual, stories, systems of governance and management, and are visible in the archaeological record and modified ecosystems.

Through the lens of Indigenous ways of knowing and being with the land, this course will explore how Indigenous peoples (with emphasis on Coast Salish) specifically and from other parts of the country and world understand and interact with their environments. Our explorations will be embedded in current social-ecological contexts, which on the one hand threaten these age-old knowledges and practices, but on the other, speak to the urgent need to learn from and adapt these knowledges and practices today. Concepts of deep time, kinship, stewardship, restoration and place will be considered. Learning will take place in university classrooms, traditional territories of Coast Salish peoples and invite knowledge keepers and Elders into these spaces and will weave in dialogic and land-based learning practices.