Amy Stillman, Arthur F. Thurnau professor and director of the program in Native American studies, guides students through stories of Indigenous knowledge systems in the discussion-based course NATIVEAM 311: Native American Studies and the Humanities.
NATIVEAM 311 is a three-credit course and can be taken for humanities distribution credit. For fall 2024, the course was offered in one section, Indigenous Ways of Being. NATIVEAM 311 is also cross-listed as AMCULT 311 Section 005.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Stillman said she centers four books in the course, all by Indigenous authors: “Becoming Kin” by Patty Krawec, “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, “As We Have Always Done” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and “On Indigenuity” by Daniel Wildcat. Stillman said the course structure centers on discussions led by students, who bring questions on the books to their assigned class.
“I’ve completely handed over the direction that we go into to the students,” Stillman said. “Every session they come up with amazing discussion and the questions were not limited to the book but took us out into…what she writes about.”
Stillman said she believes discussion-based learning gives students ownership of the content. She also said she does not believe tests or quizzes are useful ways to display and understanding of class material. Her course grades are entirely based on participation through in-class discussion, two short writing assignments, a journal, a term project and a final paper.
“There is no direct accountability mechanism built in, but the students have really taken it upon themselves to say the material is interesting enough to them that the discussion questions have been good, and that’s drawn in all of the students,” Stillman said. “I have heard so many students on so many days walking out and telling the person they were sitting next to, ‘Wow, that was a really great discussion.’ I think it’s partly because it was student-led and not me standing up there and trying to extract comments.”
Kinesiology sophomore Oliver Goldberg wrote in an email to The Daily that he initially signed up to take the class to fulfill a humanities requirement and was excited about the opportunity to take a course with an Indigenous professor. He wrote that after three months in the course, the class had become meaningful to him.
“The most valuable thing I have learned from this course is respect,” Goldberg wrote. “Native people and nature have a reciprocal relationship of respect. With technology and people becoming increasingly more separated into their own lives, it is crucial to remember to respect others.”
Stillman said she hopes the discussions within the course will guide students to see that there are many ways of thinking about the world around them.
“What I want to get them to get out of the course is that there are many ways of thinking about how to live in this world and the present, our present society, of toxic politics and rampant consumerism,” Stillman said. “Capitalism is so prevalent in our society. There are other ways to live that could be much more fulfilling than what we have now.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA freshman Gauri Chawla said she has had an interest in learning about how Native American environmental practices can help combat climate change prior to coming to the University of Michigan. Chawla said she decided to take NATIVEAM 311 to find a space where she felt people would listen to her and appreciate her activism.
“I thought that by connecting myself specifically to a college course with a professor who obviously knows a lot more about the subject, it could further my not only my understanding of Indigenous epistemologies and methods of getting that knowledge out in the world, it could help me as an advocate for these methods, and it could help me as an activist,” Chawla said.
Chawla said she feels it is important that colleges offer Native American Studies courses like NATIVEAM 311 to provide learning opportunities to students who want to learn about the history of Indigenous people, which includes the forced assimilation of Indigenous communities by the United States federal government.
“I think it’s just important that we continue to learn about Native Americans because they have been so resistant in the face of several forces, powerful forces that have tried to erase them,” Chawla said. “It is up to us to understand that erasure and keep them alive because they are what connects us to this country.”
Daily News Contributor Arielle Levine can be reached at ariellel@umich.edu.
