Instructor: Ken Brealey Email: Ken.Brealey@ucfv.ca
Office Rooms: Cha A102A   Office Phones: Cha 2406
                    Abb A406B                      Abb 4711

Course Outline

If, in the contemporary global community, indigenous claims to lands and resources, and the revival or preservation of cultures attached to them constitute one of the pre-eminent justiciable questions of our time, it is because such claims are ultimately about the material and conceptual ‘struggle over geography’. To the degree that this course is partly about who indigenous peoples are, where they live, and how they have been affected by European modernity, it is about the ‘geography of Aboriginal people’. To the degree that a just accommodation of indigenous aspirations requires an understanding of how Aboriginal people produce different kinds of space, it is about ‘Aboriginal geographies’ as experienced, represented and lived by Aboriginal people themselves. Drawing on a range of post-structuralist, postcolonial, empirical and oral literatures and representations (textual and graphic) and from pre-contact to the present and towards an uncertain geographical future, we begin and end in British Columbia, but with stops around the globe en route. The course has audiovisual, field trip, and guest speaker support, and split about evenly between lecture and seminar format. Expect to participate.

Required text: There is no required text for this course. You will need, though, a copy of the pre-packaged course reader for GEOG447 – which will be on sale in the bookstore near the beginning of term. Any other necessary material will be on library reserve or supplied in class.

Evaluation

Term paper and in class presentation 35%
Reader presentation(s) and discussion: 30%
Final (take home) exam 35%

Course Outline

Wk1: Introduction to the course; a whirlwind tour from the lower Fraser valley to Sóhl Téméxw and back again (and some reflections on it)
Wk2: Geography lived like a story; shamans, tricksters, and heroes and the narrative construction of the world
Wk3: Landmarking, naming and wayfinding; the spatial referencing systems of Aboriginal peoples
Wk4: Aboriginal ecology and landscape; sacred spaces, bodies, and land tenure systems
Wk5: The difference that perspective makes; territory, temporality and knowledge in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal worlds
Wk6: Field Trip: varies depending on term
Wk7: Since time immemorial; adventures into the traditional geographies of the Gitxsan, Carrier, Evenki, and Spinifex peoples
Wk8: Contact and conflict; what happens when Aboriginal peoples ‘discover Europe’?
Wk9: Field Trip: varies depending on term
Wk10: The Red Road Ensemble and other ‘narrations of nationhood’; resistance, renewal and the postcolonial aura
Wk11: As long as the sun shines and the waters flow; continuity and change in the geographies of the Gitxsan, Carrier, Evenki and Spinifex peoples
Wk12: Student Presentations I
Wk13: Student Presentations II