Key Information
About the content
Indigenous Canada is a 12-lesson Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that explores Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada. From an Indigenous perspective, this course explores key issues facing Indigenous peoples today from a historical and critical perspective highlighting national and local Indigenous-settler relations. Topics for the 12 lessons include the fur trade and other exchange relationships, land claims and environmental impacts, legal systems and rights, political conflicts and alliances, Indigenous political activism, and contemporary Indigenous life, art and its expressions.
Instructors
Dr. Tracy Bear
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Native Studies & Dept. of Women's and Gender Studies
Dr. Paul Gareau
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Native Studies
Content Designer
Platform
Coursera is a digital company offering massive open online course founded by computer teachers Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller Stanford University, located in Mountain View, California.
Coursera works with top universities and organizations to make some of their courses available online, and offers courses in many subjects, including: physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, data science, and other subjects.
Accomplished an entwining of research and reality to give give a focused course well worth your time and effort for thinking ;)
Accomplished an entwining of research and reality to give give a focused course well worth your time and effort for thinking ;)
This was an important learning for me, to bring the history into the contemporary world we all live in. The course material was clear and accessible with various ways to learn (auditory and visual). The online/mobile app was also useful to be able to keep up the course work. I will recommend this course to my colleagues, friends and family. Thank you. Sharon Stevens
I am so grateful to the University of Alberta and staff member of this course "Indigenous Canada". It provides a vast knowledge on the people, history, and lives of Aboriginals in Canada which explores a distinct narrative through different forms of art, story telling, painting, interviews, and detail explanation with a great evidence and materials. I am so glad and also thankful to everyone involved in this thought provoking course. Highly recommended !
Thanks for the the efforts that went into this course. It is very well presented, shares truths and worldviews that we 'settlers' need to be aware of. I hope it will be taken by many!!
I think this course should be part of our mandatory mainstream education. Although I had some superficial familiarity with the course content through Social Studies education in 1980s Alberta, a lot of this content was delivered expertly to someone with fresh eyes, perspective, and enthusiasm for learning the truth about indigenous peoples, history, and culture. As a resident living in unceded territory of Tsleil-Waututh First Nation, I believe it is my duty to learn as much as I can in honour of the indigenous people's contributions to this land, and for the debt of gratitude we owe to them. I hope for more classes on native studies through coursera or on my own. I am also a U of A alumni and wish I could go back a couple decades in a time machine so I could have taken courses then.
