Taught By:
Zoltán Grossman
Geography and Native American & Indigenous Studies
The Evergreen State College
Read profile here.
Course Description:
In “Conceptualizing Place,” we explore historical and contemporary relationships of Pacific Northwest Native peoples to place, using art and geography in a cross-cultural comparative analysis, and as “common ground” for strengthening intercultural communication. The unique status of Indigenous nations can be better understood by highlighting the centrality of territory in Native identity, and the strong Indigenous connections to place. These connections can be seen in numerous fields: art and material culture, Native national sovereignty, attachment to aboriginal and treaty-ceded lands, the focus on traditional land use and protection of sacred sites, environmental protection, climate justice, sustainable planning, Indigenous migration and symbolic mobility (through community practices such as powwows and canoe journeys).
All of these connections have been expressed artistically and geographically through traditional Indigenous cartographies, “mapping” of ideas using contemporary art practices, digital graphic design, and modern mapmaking techniques. Examination of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary ideas about land, place, environment, and relationship to human cultures offers the opportunity to develop new conceptualizations for the meaning of place, self, and community. We examine how conceptions of land are disseminated through art and objects of material culture, informing our examination with geographic studies and investigation into the sociopolitical uses of mapping.
Student Campaigns:
Students discovered differences and potential meeting points between Native and Western cultural systems, identified differences within and among diverse Tribes and First Nations, and developed an understanding of Indigenous peoples’ ability to define and set their own social, cultural, and spatial boundaries and interpretations. Students developed greater awareness of Indigenous cultures, but also of aspects of culture that may be determined and protected by Native peoples themselves.