Indigenous Worldviews and Strategic Reconciliation: Ancestral Governance, Chapter 1 : Americas

Catalog description

This new course is the first in a five-chapter series - one quarter (over 5 years, recurring) per continent - designed to bring Indigenous worldviews and governance systems into Stanford's sustainability curriculum for the first time. No equivalent course or series currently exists at Stanford. Chapter 1 (or the first academic year the quarter-long course will be offered) focuses on the Americas. It integrates Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with governance analysis, examining how Indigenous communities have managed territory, population, and land through systems that predate and outlast Western institutional frameworks. Students trace a learning arc from Cree territories to the Uyuni Salt Flats, engaging directly with Indigenous scholars, community practitioners, and knowledge keepers - a living encounter, not an archived one. Designed as a gateway course requiring no prior background, it welcomes undergraduates from engineering, law, earth sciences, and the humanities equally. Cross-faculty collaboration across environmental law, ecological anthropology, and political ecology is built into its structure from the outset.