American Indian World Views

• The University of South Dakota has a long-standing commitment to American Indian heritage which is reflected in its mission statement. As a result, the University is rich in resources for the study of American Indian culture. These resources include the Institute of American Indian Studies (established by the state legislature in 1955); the South Dakota Oral History Center (housing the American Indian Research Project and the South Dakota Oral History Project); the W.H. Over Museum; the Oscar Howe Memorial Association (Collection, Gallery, and Archives); the American Indian education initiatives in the Schools of Education, Medicine, and Law (plus the law school's Indian Law Collection); and the extensive holdings on American Indian subject matter in the I.D. Weeks Library.

• This impressive list of resources is capped off by the University's new undergraduate major in American Indian Studies. And, by virtue of the institution's geographic location in Indian Country, easy access to South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska tribal communities, area museums, and educational institutions, offers students a vast array of academic and service opportunities.

• Today, a new and vital understanding is emerging about the cultural benefits of aboriginal world views and values. Indigenous peoples' time-honored perspectives on the environment, cosmology, community, family, governance, and the sciences are increasingly seen as significant in an interdependent, post modern world. Not only are dominant cultures more receptive to the wisdom of indigenous peoples, but indigenous peoples themselves are increasingly aggressive about their place in the contemporary world. Indian individuals and communities are actively reclaiming their culture and exerting their political and legal rights on a broad range of issues including sovereignty, gaming, health, repatriation, hunting, fishing, and water rights.

• Today's college-educated individuals enter a complex world that includes a great span of diversity in world views and cultural values. This theme and the unique resources in American Indian Studies at USD, afford our graduates focused, intense, and direct contact with a rich, cohesive alternative to the Euro-American world view. The experiences to be gained are essential for broadening student's perspectives who, by-in-large, come from homogeneous cultural environments and communities with limited cultural diversity.

• "American Indian World Views" offers USD undergraduate students a broad range of values and perspectives which can enrich their lives and equip them to become better citizens in today's global community. The foremost benefit may be increasing respect for other cultures and peoples and the development of an intellectual and emotional openness to diverse viewpoints. Undergraduates need experiences that cause them to reflect upon their assumptions, to expand their beliefs, and to provoke their sense of discovery and wonder. In this context, issues raised in American Indian Studies will significantly challenge our students.

• American Indian Studies is by its very nature interdisciplinary, as it touches on the full range of social, political, legal, educational, economic, religious, and scientific issues within the debate of a contemporary society. This is especially true since American Indian world views see all that exists as living, animate beings/forces which are inter-related and connected one to the other, eschewing the categorization, separation, and hierarchical order typical of Euro-American cultural structures.

• American Indian Studies can serve as a means of engaging students in meaningful discussions and thought processes from a variety of perspectives about pertinent, real-world issues and situation. For example, challenges concerning the political, ethical, and moral obligations to honor treaty rights whether the issues are the return of the Black Hills, civil and criminal jurisdiction, or tribal land claims--these and others which stem from the larger issue of sovereignty.

• In preparing to address such monumental and complex issues and to increase their breadth as individuals and citizens, students need to undertake extensive reading and research and to engage in dialogue with professors, students (particularly those with no significant or prior exposure to the historical, legal, social, or cultural components of this theme) will gain insights leading to expanded intellectual understanding and civic involvement.

• Research, reading, and experiential activities offered through this thematic cluster will lead to new/expanded understanding about American Indian culture and "Indian world views." Once exposed to these viewpoints, it is anticipated that students will feel confident in seeking solutions using an interdisciplinary problem-solving approach. These activities will include intellectual/theoretical approaches as well as direct interaction with those well versed in the concepts of jurisdiction and geographical "sharing" of space (Indian nations situated within state boundaries), hierarchy of the natural order, health and healing, kinship systems, significance of a language to a culture--and other aspects of Indian world views, to name but a few.

• Not only will American Indian Studies as a discipline attract a wide variety of students from other majors and cultural backgrounds, students outside the region and international students will find ways to compare and contrast American Indian issues with those of their experiences--determining common threads and appreciating differences--broadening global perspectives. These experiences will provide practical skills for students to recognize and demonstrate their individual and collective civic and community responsibilities and instill confidence in them to "imagine" and to select ways in which collective action produces positive results. These first-hand "action" encounters will enhance understanding and enrich the students' friends, classmates, and families.

• The problem-solving dimension of the theme is inherent in the immediacy of the issues being addressed. Much of what will be encountered in these experiences will involve real-life situations, requiring students to develop personal positions on ethical, moral, political, and legal issues.

• While students are expected to select their own project, their theme service experiences will spark associations and action to benefit themselves and others such as: helping maintain the inipi (sweat lodge) grounds; serve on the annual powwow committee; tutor American Indian public and private school students; conduct or assist in developing Indian educational projects at the W.H. Over Museum, USD and community libraries, the Arts Council, and the school systems; serve as interns on Indian matters in their home or reservation communities.

• A variety of service components are available. These may be developed as a part of the course syllabus or as an independent project.

Current events and programs which augment and support the theme include:

• Oscar Howe Memorial Lecture
• Tiospaye Student Council
• Native American Awareness Week
• Northern Plains Tribal Arts
• Native Writers' Series
• Indian Law Symposium
• Native American Day Powwow
• Joseph Harper Cash Memorial Lecture Series (selected programs)
• Students of Color in Psychology
• Indian community potlucks, programs, and activities throughout the year

Institute mainpage
American Indian Studies Page
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Links to Other USD Departments

16 January 2003, th, lrb