Fall 2020 & Winter 2021, The Evergreen State College
Faculty: Zoltán Grossman, Ph.D. and Alexander McCarty, Ph.D.
Syllabus Fall 2020
Syllabus Winter 2021
In this two-quarter program, we explored historical and contemporary relationships of Pacific Northwest Native peoples to place, using art and geography in a cross-cultural comparative analysis, and as “common ground” for strengthening intercultural communication. The unique status of Indigenous nations can be better understood by highlighting the centrality of territory in Native identity, and the strong Indigenous connections to place. These connections can be seen in numerous fields: art and material culture, Native national sovereignty, attachment to aboriginal and treaty-ceded lands, the focus on traditional land use and protection of sacred sites, environmental protection, climate justice, sustainable planning, Indigenous migration and symbolic mobility (through community practices such as powwows and canoe journeys), particularly in coastal Washington and British Columbia.
All of these connections have been expressed artistically and geographically through traditional Indigenous cartographies, artistic “mapping” of ideas using contemporary art practices, digital graphic design, and modern mapmaking techniques. Examination of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary ideas about land, place, environment, and relationship to human cultures offers the opportunity to develop new conceptualizations for the meaning of place, self, and community. We examined how conceptions of land are disseminated through art and objects of material culture, informing our examination with geographic studies and investigation into the sociopolitical uses of mapping.
Students discovered differences and potential meeting points between Native and Western cultural systems, identified differences within and among diverse Tribes and First Nations, and developed an understanding of Indigenous peoples’ ability to define and set their own social, cultural, and spatial boundaries and interpretations. Students developed greater awareness of Indigenous cultures, but also of aspects of culture that may be determined and protected by Native peoples themselves.
In fall quarter we introduced students to historical geographies and worldviews of Pacific Northwest Indigenous nations, basic visual literacy skills in art (particularly the northern formline style), and literacy in graphic representational systems for geographic data. Remote program activities involved faculty and guest lectures, image analysis, films and videos, workshops, readings and class discussions, short writing assignments, and presentations. Students wrote weekly papers synthesizing their reading with program activities in that same week, organized around a weekly theme.
Fall digital workshops trained students in the design and production of artwork or maps in Adobe Illustrator. Students developed digital artwork or maps to contribute to a winter-quarter publication on Pacific Northwest watersheds and the deconstruction of barriers to salmon migration. Students researched and presented on the larger context of their graphic, in a case study presentation at the end of fall quarter.
Assigned fall readings included Messages from Frank’s Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way (by Charles Wilkinson), The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (by Thomas King), As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (by Dina Gilio-Whitaker), In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Contemporary Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum (edited by Robin Wright & Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse), Asserting Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis (edited by Zoltán Grossman & Alan Parker), excerpts from Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, 50th Anniversary Edition (by Bill Holm), excerpts from Solitary Raven: the Selected Writings of Bill Reid (by William Reid & Robert Bringhurst), and excerpts from Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment (by Doug Aberley).
In winter quarter, students developed specialized team projects, to assemble text, artwork, maps, photographs, and other graphics into an educational publication developed in Adobe InDesign, the focus of digital training sessions at the start of the quarter. Their publication Removing Barriers: Restoring Salmon Runs through Tribal Alliances focused on obstacles to salmon migration, and how tribal nations have led the effort to remove these dams, dikes, and culverts in order to restore salmon habitat in different Pacific Northwest watersheds. Students developed the text, graphics, and layout in four drafts, and presented their finished chapters to the class at the end of the quarter.
In winter quarter, students built on their understanding of historical geographies and worldviews of Pacific Northwest Indigenous nations by writing weekly papers synthesizing their reading with program activities in that same week. Students also built on their visual literacy skills in Pacific Northwest Indigenous art, with a particular focus on the Coast Salish art style.
Assigned winter readings included Elwha: A River Reborn (by Lynda Mapes), and Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-19th-Century Northwest Coast (by Paige Raibmon), as well as excerpts from Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (by Winona LaDuke), Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation (by Beth Rose Middleton), Contemporary Coast Salish Art (edited by Rebecca Blanchard & Nancy Davenport), Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art (edited by Gerald McMaster), S’abadeb / The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art & Artists (by Barbara Brotherton), Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast (by Ian M. Thom), and Robert Davidson: Abstract Impulse (by the National Museum of the American Indian).