Taking a social and cultural historical approach, this History U course examines the experiences of Native peoples in modern America since the turn of the twentieth century.
Course Instructor: Professor Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole), Arizona State University
Eligibility: High school students
Image Source: Alcatraz: Indians of All Tribes 1, no. 2 (February 1970) (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC09792.01).
History U
Free for high school students
Taking a social and cultural historical approach, this History U course examines the experiences of Native peoples in modern America since the turn of the twentieth century. It will explore how Geronimo’s final surrender, the Ghost Dance, and Wounded Knee in 1890 catalyzed decades of federal and state policies that threatened the existence of Indigenous tribes. Among other topics, students will learn about the horrors that plagued Indigenous children forced to attend residential schools, the implications of the Dawes land allotment, FDR’s Indian New Deal, the rise of the American Indian Movement, and the enduring fight launched by tribal governments to protect their homelands. The course will also challenge students to consider the implications of how Native peoples are represented in a modern context.
The views expressed in this course are those of Dr. Donald L. Fixico.
Alona Whitebird Medina explains what you will learn in this course.
Donald L. Fixico, Regents and Distinguished Foundation Professor of History, Arizona State University
Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole) is a Regents and Distinguished Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University. He is a policy historian, oral historian, and ethnohistorian whose work explores the history of American Indians and the American West. He has published fifteen books, including American Indians in a Modern World (2008), Treaties with American Indians: An Encyclopedia of Rights, Conflicts, and Sovereignty, 3 volumes (2007), and Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West (2013).
This course introduces and explores the complexities of American Indian history from the Columbian Exchange through twentieth-century activism.
The course examines the expansion of the US to the Pacific, the dispossession of Native peoples, and environmental transformations.
This course examines the history of the United States during a period of great social change and conflict.