Creation stories from Turtle Island foreground an integral connection between land and story. "Sky Woman Falling" contains key ecological and environmental knowledge. This course explores the relationship between land and story, emphasizing seeds as sources of sovereignty and repositories of knowledge across generations. We focus on Native New Jersey while understanding the history of this land in the context of global indigeneity and settler colonialism. Course literature engages seeds, land, and the environment from a perspective that crosses the disciplines of American studies, literature, history, ecology, and environmental studies.

This course is designed to introduce students to the historical processes and issues that have shaped the lives if Indigenous Americans over the past five centuries. We will explore the ways that the diverse peoples who lived in the Americas constructed different kinds of societies and how their goals and political decisions shaped the lives of all those who would come to inhabit the North American continent. The course requires students to read and analyze historical documents and contemporary literature, and includes a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City.