Led by: Prof. Donald Fixico (Arizona State University)
Course Number: AMHI 602
Semesters: Summer 2023, Fall 2024
Image: A stereograph by Strohmeyer & Wyman, Indian Chiefs: Quanah Parker, Geronimo, Buckskin Charlie, American Horse, Little Plume, Hollow Horn Boar, in the Inaugural Parade, Metropolitan Series, 1905 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC06449.49)
Taking a social and cultural historical approach, this course is about Native peoples in modern America since the turn of the twentieth century. It begins with the idea of the Vanishing Race, Geronimo’s final surrender, the Ghost Dance, and Wounded Knee in 1890. We will continue with the stresses of the twentieth century, including the results of the Dawes land allotment, FDR’s Indian New Deal, and Indian participation in World War II and urbanization. The course will also explore Native activism in civil rights, including the American Indian Movement, the protection of tribal natural and spiritual resources, and the controversy surrounding Indian mascots, and the development of the gaming industry that is changing the landscape across Indian Country. This course explores why and how all of this happened.
Donald Fixico, Regents’ Professor, Arizona State University
Donald L. Fixico (Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Muscogee Creek and Seminole) is Regents and Distinguished Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University. He is a policy historian and ethnohistorian whose work focuses on American Indians, oral history, and the US West. Professor Fixico has worked on twenty-five historical documentaries and published fifteen books. Prior to Arizona State University, Professor Fixico was the Thomas Bowlus Distinguished Professor of American Indian History, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Scholar, and founding director of the Center for Indigenous Nations Studies at University of Kansas. He has received postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California-Los Angeles and Newberry Library, Chicago. In 2000, President Clinton appointed Professor Fixico to the Advisory Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Fixico has given lectures nationally and internationally and works with tribes and Indigenous organizations.
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.