WR-242: Native American Religious Traditions

This course is INACTIVE
School
Liberal Arts
Division
Social Sciences
Department
Religious Studies
Academic Level
Undergraduate
Course Subject
World Religions
Course Number
242
Course Title
Native American Religious Traditions
Credit Hours
3.00
Instructor Contact Hours Per Semester
47.00 (for 15-week classes)
Student Contact Hours Per Semester
47.00 (for 15-week classes)
Grading Method
A-E
Pre-requisites
WR-130 or WR-131, grade "C" or better
Catalog Course Description

Introduces students to the spiritualities, religions, histories, and current challenges faced by various Native American peoples. Most, if not all, current challenges impinge upon or directly relate to issues of religious concern to Native communities. Major ideas concerning belief systems, myth, ritual, and art—all of which are important ways that religious concepts are shared and practiced—will be explored.

Goals, Topics, and Objectives

Core Course Topics
  1. Ethical issues pertaining to the study of Native American religious traditions by non-Native Americans and/or non-participants
    • Analyze tensions between non-Native scholars and Native Americans regarding the acquisition and public dissemination of information pertaining to Native American religious beliefs and practices.
    • Evaluate the importance of ethical conduct when studying Native American religious traditions, paying special attention to issues of power, exploitation, and inaccurate information.
    • Explain the value of listening, and paying heed, to “insider voices” within Native American communities.
  2. Approaches to the study of Native American religious traditions
    • Summarize the history of scholarly study regarding Native American religious traditions.
    • Compare and contrast two or more of the following contemporary approaches:
      • Thematic and Comparative Religious Studies
      • Folklore Collections and Anthropological Monographs
      • Early Descriptive Ethnography
      • Contemporary Native (late 20th century to the present)
  3. The history and problematic aspects of studying Native American religions
    • Analyze controversies within academe concerning the study of Native American religious traditions, with the objective of gaining appreciation for social, political, and justice issues involved in that study
    • Analyze controversies outside academe concerning the study of Native American religious traditions, with the objective of gaining appreciation for social, political, and justice issues involved in that study
  4. Stereotypes of Native Americans, with emphasis on perceptions and representations of Native religious belief and practice
    • Compare textual and visual representations of the Noble Savage, with emphasis on Native religious beliefs and practices
    • Compare textual and visual representations of the Ignoble Savage, with emphasis on Native religious beliefs and practices
    • Identify and discuss the stereotypes that students bring, usually subconsciously, to their study of Native American religious traditions
  5. Traditional Native American religions
    • Recognize the broad themes found in traditional Native AmericanReligious Traditions. These may include, but are not limited to:
      • Beliefs
      • Mythology
      • Ritual
      • Environmental Ethics
      • Art
    • Identify differences in thematic expressions between Native American cultural groups to avoid stereotyping “Indians” as a singular group
  6. The United States Government and Prohibitions Against Native Religions
    • Explain ways that the United States government aimed to destroy Native American religious traditions through policies of assimilation. Discussion may include, but is not limited to:
      • The Civilization Act (1819)
      • The intent, operation, and impact of Indian boarding schools from the 1870s to the 1930s
      • The Dawes Act (1887)
      • The Termination Policy (1953)
    • Analyze a given assimilation policy in terms of its impact upon Native American religious beliefs and practices
    • Summarize ways that Native Americans resisted those policies and the changes they sought to implement, paying special attention to modifications that Native Americans made to the colonizer’s religions, and to modifications they may have made to their own religions as natives sought to adapt to co-opt, or block a given policy or policies.
  7. The United States Government and Support for Native Religions
    • Describe ways that the United States government aimed to support Native American religious traditions through policies of assistance. Discussion may include, but is not limited to:
      • The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934
      • The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978)
      • The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (1990)
      • The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993)
    • Analyze a given policy in terms of its impact upon Native American religious beliefs and practices
    • Summarize ways that Native Americans embraced those policies and the changes they sought to implement.
  8. Native American Christianity and Syncretistic Religions
    • Compare and contrast the experience of Native conversion to Christianity under European rule. Examples may be drawn from any one or more of the following:
      • British missionaries and the Praying Indians of New England
      • Spanish missionaries in California and the American southwest
      • French missionaries in the Great Lakes
      • Russian missionaries among the Aleut
    • Analyze the blend (or “syncretism”) of Native and Christian religious elements in the United States. Choices may include, but are not limited to:
      • Native American Church
      • Indian Shaker Religion
    • Explain the largely wholesale adoption of Christianity by some Native Americans. Choices may be drawn from, but are not limited to:
      • Native American Catholics
      • Native American Protestants
  9. Revitalization movements
    • Analyze ways in which Native American religious revival movements were intended to push back the pressures of cultural change brought by American immigrants
    • Compare two or more of these movements and explain how they were intended to reinvigorate and unify Native cultural groups under the banner of religion.
  10. The Resurgence of Traditionalism
    • Identify and discuss the presence of specific traditional Native American religious beliefs and practices in contemporary examples of native cultural and religious resurgence. Choices of topics can include, but are not limited to:
      • Pow wows
      • “Fish-ins” (Puget Sound)
      • The American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee, and Alcatraz
      • “Fish wars” (Wisconsin)
      • “Paddle to Seattle”
      • Makah whale hunt
      • Second Hawaiian Renaissance
      • Native Resistance to rock climbers on Devil’sTower
    • Compare and contrast differences in traditional Native American religious values identified in the selected example or examples, explaining changes and continuities between past and present.
  11. Contemporary Challenges Facing Native American Religions
    • Analyze contemporary challenges facing Native American religions, focusing on the ways that these challenges are tied for Native peoples to past histories, current difficulties, and future hopes. Choices of topics may include, but are not limited to:
      • Ethics and impacts related to the cultural appropriation of Native American religious ideas by non-natives. Examples may be drawn from New Age religion and other sources.
      • Present-day Native American identity issues and their relationships to traditional native beliefs and practices. Consider, for instance, whether it is necessary for a contemporary individual to hold those beliefs and conduct those practices in order to be considered a “real” Indian by their families, their friends, their community, or by American society as a whole.
      • Discuss how the idea of a “real Indian” is attached to stereotypes of the “Noble Savage, and how those stereotypes are held today by Natives and non-natives alike.
      • The importance of revitalizing Native cultures, including their religious beliefs and practices, following extended historical experiences of losing traditional knowledge.

Assessment and Requirements

Assessment of Academic Achievement

Each instructor will identify and implement appropriate methods to assess the achievement of the learning objectives of the course. These methods can include, but are not necessarily limited to multiple-choice, matching, and essay examinations, as well as out-of-class papers, Internet assignments, audio and/or video conferences, and projects.

Texts

Texts will be selected by instructors.

Outcomes

General Education Categories
  • Humanities and Fine Arts
MTA Categories
  • Category 5: Humanities and Fine Arts
Satisfies Wellness Requirement
No

Credit for Prior College-Level Learning

Options for Credit for Prior College-Level Learning
Portfolio Review
Effective Term
Fall 2022