LAW, LAND, AND SACRED SPACE IN INDIGENOUS
LITERATURES
FALL 2003 /
ENGLISH 664
Course Description
By focusing on social, historical, cosmological, political, and ecological links between indigenous cultures and landscapes, we will examine how indigenous societies have created meaning through interactions with their natural environment. We will study “Place” as provider of environmental values, identity, and history. By “Place,” I mean a continuum of locations ranging from relatively unaltered wildlands to architectural structures, but our exclusive focus will be on indigenous communities and the lands they have inhabited and used. Alongside our examination of land and sacred space, we will also examine laws that have affected indigenous communities traditional relationships with sacred space and the meanings that have evolved out of these new additions to their traditional homelands--land as property, a commodity, public space, etc.