Global First Nations Histories

This course explores converging literatures about global First Nations histories. The course will explore the causes and consequences of major events in First Nations histories from the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and in Europe. The survival of these peoples owes much to their own agency in maintaining social life and creating historical narratives. The course examines the importance of language and cultural concepts within diverse First Nations historical narratives, assessing the ways in which such narratives and discourses generate conditions of survival. The topics covered will include concepts of identity within the process of colonisation and decolonisation, evolving government policies and resistance to them, ideas of sovereignty, treaty-making, and other formal relationships between colonised and colonisers, and recent forms of post-colonialisms and global movements for redemption, regeneration, and reconciliation.