Native American Programs

For a complete list of courses and course descriptions please see the University Catalog.  For further questions please contact the department.

NAS 101 0001-LEC 43886, Intro to Native American Studies, TTH 12:30-1:45pm, Williams Hall 211, 3cr.
Max Enrollment: 50, Instructor: Anthony Sutton
Course Description: This course will survey American Indian social, philosophical and cultural aspects in historical and contemporary society. It examines the issues and experiences of Native people from a variety of perspectives. Satisfies the General Education Social Contexts & Institutions and Cultural Diversity & International Perspectives requirements. Prerequisites: None 

NAS 101 0190-LEC 45715, Introduction to Native American Studies, Web-Online, 3cr.
Max Enrollment: 60, Instructor: Lisa Neuman
Course Description: This course will survey American Indian social, philosophical and cultural aspects in historical and contemporary society. It examines the issues and experiences of Native people from a variety of perspectives. Satisfies the General Education Social Contexts & Institutions and Cultural Diversity & International Perspectives requirements. Prerequisites: None  

NAS 101 WINT-LEC 43887, Introduction to Native American Studies, WINTER-Web-Online, 3cr.
Max Enrollment: 49, Instructor: John Bear Mitchell
Course Description: This course will survey American Indian social, philosophical, spiritual, and cultural aspects in historical and contemporary society. It examines the issues and experiences of Native people from a variety of perspectives. Satisfies the General Education Social Contexts & Institutions and Cultural Diversity & International Perspectives requirements. Prerequisites: None  

NAS 102 0001-LEC 43918, Intro to Wabanaki Culture/History/Issues, T 4:00-6:50pm, Williams Hall 211, 3 cr.
Max Enrollment: 50, Instructor: John Bear Mitchell
Course Description: This course provides an overview of the tribes that make up the Wabanaki Confederacy: the Penobscot, the Passamaquoddy, the Maliseet and the Micmac. It will provide a survey of the individual tribes’ historic, cultures, philosophic, and creation stories, as well as a brief overview of Canadian, U.S., and Maine Indian history. This course will discuss and explore current issues and concerns as well as critical concepts such as sovereignty, treaty rights, and tribal government. 

NAS 201 0001-LEC 43919, Topics in Native American Studies: Engaging with Foodways, TTH 11:00am-12:15pm, Williams Hall 205, 3cr.
Max Enrollment: 25, Instructor: Anthony Sutton
Course Description: The ways we think about and engage with food daily have already been and continue to be shaped by social, cultural, and political influences. Family food traditions and storytelling can help us understand histories and culture around food and how that leads to different values that become supported or not through food infrastructure. Food infrastructure and policies designed to support it, can also be places to critically engage with how these structures create issues of equity and injustice within food systems and what communities are doing to change those issues. This course provides several ways of engaging with topics around food, whether students are interested in how culture and identity becomes produced and reproduced through food or ways to restore or reimagine food systems, both require developing specific skill sets to support these ways of thinking. 

NAS 203 0001-LEC 45435, Wabanaki Language II, TH 5:00-7:50pm, Williams Hall 206, 3cr.
Max Combined Enrollment: 21, Instructor: Roger Paul
Course Description: Wabanaki Languages 2 is intended for students that have finished level 1 or those who have a knowledge of Wabanaki vocabulary. This class will focus on short interactions and sentence structure. Students will be introduced to the Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey writing system and will create sentences to present and discuss in class. Manipulation of verb phrases and some morphology will help students read and comprehend Wabanaki sentences. Students will be able to prepare and deliver a short presentation to the class in a Wabanaki Language 

NAS 230 0001-LEC 45288/HTY​ ​222 0001-LEC ​45287, ME Indian History in the 20th Century, MWF 1:00-1:50pm, Stevens Hall 370, 3cr.
Max Combined Enrollment: 35, Instructor: Micah Pawling
Course Description: Too often Native people are relegated to the distant past, leading society to have misunderstandings about indigenous communities today.  This course introduces students to Wabanaki history of Maine and eastern Canada in the twentieth century.  The term Wabanaki is all-inclusive term that refers primarily to the Mi’kmaqs, Maliseets, Passamaquoddies, and Penobscots, along with other Abenaki groups.  The tribal homeland encompasses present-day northern New England, the Maritime provinces, and southern Quebec. We will explore the variety of ways Wabanaki experiences deviated from the national narrative on American Indians and examine when Native challenges were in lockstep with western tribes in the twentieth century. The course considers the interplay between cultural traditions and modernity. The regional scope highlights local developments.  We will investigate prominent themes of resistance, accommodation, activism, sovereignty, water, and cultural survival. Wabanaki people were positive actors in their own affairs, not passive pawns subdued by forces beyond their control. The course will provide context to contemporary challenges Wabanaki people confront.  As one tribal historian astutely noted, “I can never give up hope, like my ancestors never gave up hope.” This course satisfies these General Education requirements: Cultural Diversity and International Perspectives; Population and the Environment. 

NAS 298 0001-IND, 46650, Directed Study in Native American Studies
Max Enrollment: 10, Instructor: Darren Ranco
Course Description: Individual study, research, field experience and writing projects in Native American Studies.  May be repeated for credit.  Arranged upon request.  Prerequisite: NAS 101 and permission

NAS 401 0001-LEC, 44016/ HTY​ ​481 0001-LEC ​43509,, American Indians of the Northeast: A History, MWF 9:00-9:50am, Stevens Hall 370, 3cr.
Max Combined Enrollment: 40, Instructor: Micah Pawling
Course Description: This course explores the significance Native American history from a regional perspective, with an emphasis on the diversity of indigenous peoples, homelands, and identity. While the term Northeast encompasses the northern Atlantic seaboard, west to the Ohio River Valley and the Great Lakes region, and north to Hudson Bay, our primary focus extends beyond New England and eastern Canada to better appreciate human movement, dispossession, and the formation of new homelands and villages. From indigenous lifeways before European arrival to the close of the twentieth century, Native peoples of the Northeast have survived over 500 years of European colonization. For survival, Native leaders made decisions about alliance formations, treaty negotiations, and cultural adaptations.  Since Native American history is too often relegated to the distant past, this course explores recent challenges that they confronted. The aim of this course is to understand Indigenous history from their own perspectives. Students will be introduced to the method of ethnohistory that can reveal indigenous voices in the past. We will investigate prominent themes of resistance, accommodation, activism, sovereignty, water, and cultural survival. As one ethnohistorian wrote, Native peoples “were positive actors in their own affairs, not passive pawns subdued by forces beyond their control.”  

NAS 498 0001-IND 46651, Directed Study in Native American Studies
Max Enrollment: 10, Instructor: Darren Ranco
Course Description: Advanced individual study, research, field experiences and writing projects in Native American Studies.  May be repeated for credit.  Arranged upon request.  Department Consent Required.  Enrollment Requirements: Prerequisite: Junior or Senior Standing and NAS 101 and one additional course within the Native American Studies minor and permission.

For questions or permission, please contact: Native American Programs office at 207-581-1417 or email Jen Bowen at jennifer.bowen@maine.edu