HRTS GU4011

I had no basis in indigenous rights, so I learned a lot about the UN documents relating to this topic as well as scholarly debates on the implementation of these rights and the framework of settler colonialism. It was certainly a new perspective that I could apply to my other courses.

Professor McCarthy taught me a lot about the rights of Indigenous Rights, how they should have been treated to how they should be treated now.

The course expanded my understanding of the development of indigenous rights, both domestically in the US and Canada, as well as through supra-national institutions (UN and related bodies). The course also explored issues around indigenous rights, including concepts of sovereignty, gender issues, responses to indigenous rights movements, etc. I learned a lot. As one might expect, the course comes at these issues more from a "Human Rights" angle than a "History" angle, which also contributed to my experience of the course, since the academic approaches to some of the human rights themes were relatively new to me.

Learned how to critically analyze and elaborate on historical and legal documents on indigenous rights. Learned how to compare legislation from different countries on indigenous peoples.

I learned a lot about the indigenous human rights movement and about different indigenous populations around the world.

I learned a lot about indigenous human rights around the world, and broadened my understanding of resistance movements by First Nations peoples in Canada and Aboriginal groups in Australia and New Zealand. I strengthened my grasp on indigenous participation and activism in the United Nations and how certain legal mechanisms are utilized to prevent or amplify human rights frameworks.

I learned about the international indigenous community's movement for human rights in the context of land reclamation, genocide acknowledgements, and desire for self-sufficiency to escape the reliance on settler-state institutions. I learned about how state sovereignty is a myth that has been normalized. As a skill I've learned how to always question the legitimacy of state institutions in order to think more critically about how we can pressure those in power to be make space of indigenous peoples in global conversations. At the same time, in terms of perspectives I've also learned that it is in some ways simultaneously less effective to solely negotiate with those institutions because even if they do "accommodate," they will only do so to an extent that allows them to retain their sense of authority and power in the exchange. Thus, I'm leaving the course inspired to dive deeper into how we can help indigenous societies flourish without needing to engage so much with those systems.

The class was very well structured. There are a lot of readings that I did not get the opportunity to read but that I will go back to at some point and reference. But thanks to this course, I was able to ground the conceptualization of indigenous resistance and liberation through different authors. There were great perspectives on what the limitations of each departure are - and we discussed those in class through discussions, which is important to consider as scholars, so that we can depart our own knowledge.

I learned a ton from this class! I feel that I learned more about settler colonialism through a comprehensive look at almost all aspects of settler colonies (climate, GBV, reconciliation). It was really interesting to learn about this from north american/eurpoean indigenous settler colonial standpoint

This class introduced me to a whole new range of knowledge about Indigenous people's activism, their fight for justice in both domestic and international contexts. I learned a lot about various topics like the Human Right to culture and its use by Indigenous people. I also learned a ton about concepts like sovereignty and identity. I had already discussed these concepts in political science classes but this class challenged and reinvented them for me. I started this class with close to zero knowledge on the topic and learned a lot in the process.