Electives

Explores the place and status of Tribal Governments in our federal system, focusing in particular on federal policy decisions underlying various laws and statutes. The course examines ways to interpret and apply the relevant laws and explores the impact that would be result from changing the policy behind those laws.

Forms of verbal and non-verbal folklore and material culture.

In-depth linguistic analysis of selected phonological, syntactic, and semantic problems in a non-Western language, concentrating on native languages of the Southwest area.

This course introduces students to health issues facing Indigenous populations. The course itself is divided into four units. Unit 1 is a general review of the definition, conceptualization, and everyday experience of Indigeneity. It provides an overview of colonization with an emphasis on its ongoing impact on health care and health research with Indigenous populations. Unit 2 discusses what health might mean from an Indigenous perspective. Unit 3 presents ethical considerations that may be especially important when working with Indigenous populations.

This interdisciplinary course is a survey of various popular and Indigenous medicinal systems that fall under the rubric known as Mexican Traditional Medicine (MTM). Mexican scholar Carlos Viesca Treviño defines MTM as medicinal knowledge(s) that emanate from Mesoamerican world views and that have adapted to historical and social conditions in the Americas. This course will explore various expressions of MTM, with a special emphasis on Indigenous medicinal approaches to healing that exemplify both continuities and adaptations.

Introduction to descriptive linguistics for Native Americans; practical linguistic and social issues in Native American languages; phonetics and phonology; orthography; dialects and language change; classroom applications.

We will study texts representative of the region we now call the American Southwest and concern ourselves with the following questions: What cultural and literary traditions did their makers work within? How did they transcend those traditions? What is the relationship between physical landscapes and imagined cultural geographies in these narratives? How is the "Southwest" represented as a region in each?

Historical and cultural background, and contemporary economic, political and social organization of indigenous and non-indigenous groups in rural Mexico. Primarily concerned with the people of the countryside, and the Mexican revolution.

Origin and distribution of native populations of North America; historical development and interrelations of cultures.