Bok Course: Indigenous Recognition, Retreat, and Memory (Davis)
Additional Information
Satisfies Senior Writing RequirementNo
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- Class sessions are regularly recorded. If you are absent due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can send you an email with instructions for accessing the recording for the class session(s) you missed.
Meeting Times/Location
MW 1:30PM - 2:50PM
Tanenbaum Hall 112
Category
Upper-Level
Credits
1.0
Indigenous Recognition, Retreat, and Memory
In 2017, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), intended to usher in a new era of rights protection for Indigenous communities. However, in the decades preceding and following its adoption, Indigenous rights globally have faced increasing contestation, political retreat, and rollback by states. While this narrative risks oversimplification, clear global trends are impacting the realization of Indigenous rights, including the current challenges of majoritarian but minimalist ballot box liberal democracies, accelerating effects of climate change, the promise of the clean energy transition or ‘just’ or ‘green’ transition, the pursuit of critical minerals on Indigenous lands, challenges to the legitimacy of Indigenous legal and political claims, and a resurgence of equality-based arguments that are often used to undermine Indigenous-specific rights.
Alongside these challenges are state-led initiatives such as transitional justice, truth-telling processes, truth commissions, healing programs, memory projects, and reconciliation frameworks. While these measures are often framed as progressive, many Indigenous peoples critique them as depoliticizing or anesthetizing the deeper pursuit of self-determination. Further critiques target UNDRIP itself, viewing it as a homogenizing, minimalist framework that limits Indigenous rights within the confines of the nation-state, rather than enabling more transformative or emancipatory possibilities.
This course will explore these developments and dynamics through a series of curated readings, critical discussions, and active class participation. Students will engage with contemporary debates surrounding Indigenous recognition, rights, and memory to assess both the promises and limitations of current approaches.
Assessment: Class participation including leading discussion for one class reading 40% Final paper 60%
Constitutional Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of constitutional law; Perform legal analysis in the context of constitutional law; Communicate effectively on topics related to constitutional law; Demonstrate an understanding of constitutional law affects other areas of law.
Perspectives on the Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of how the law affects, and is affected by, the individual course topic; Perform legal analysis in the context of the individual course topic; Communicate effectively on the legal and other aspects of the individual course topic; Demonstrate the ability to use other disciplines to analyze legal issues relevant to the individual course topic, including economics, philosophy, and sociology, as appropriate.
Equity and Inclusion Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of the varied legal aspects of equity and inclusion; Perform legal analysis in the context of topics related to equity and inclusion; Communicate effectively on the legal aspects of equity and inclusion; Demonstrate an understanding of how equity and inclusion are connected to and affected by a wide variety of legal and regulatory structures and doctrines.