Native Studies Essay

Essay Topics:

Pprovide an analysis of one of the numbered topics listed below.

 You may select essay topics from the following sources:

 1) primary texts we have studied in class this term

 2) your case study, or object of analysis

3) a work of art we have studied together in class

Suggested Essay Topics:

 1. Apply one of the following themes from our readings to a case study of your choice, analyzing your case study in the terms delineated in the work of a theorist or approach that we studied this term: Ethnohistory; naming; translation; oral history; four directions; narrative knowledge; historical trauma.

2. Analyze one nation’s experience of the fur trade, comparing the role of traditional knowledge with the role of colonialism in this history.

3. Find a creation story, analyze it and apply its tenets or values to a contemporary art work.

5. Explore and compare the similarities and differences between two First Peoples of Turtle Island.

6. What values are encoded in the bush mode of production, and how are those relevant to modern Indigenous communities in the boreal forest?

7. What difference did the bay post system and the ‘courier de bois’ system have for Indigenous peoples? How were Indigenous traders able to take advantage of the differences?

8. What was life like for Indigenous peoples of manitou-ba before the arrival of newcomers?