ENVS 056B. Land Back!: Visual Expressions of Global Indigenous Sovereignty

Cross-listed as ARTH 065.
The “Land Back” movement is an Indigenous-led campaign that in recent years has emerged as a prominent focal point for establishing Indigenous political authority over territories once claimed and controlled by Indigenous nations. This course examines how Indigenous artists and activists have expressed “Land Back,” or sovereignty over land, culture, and representation, in visual and material forms across time. It will consider Land Back and decolonization movements within a history of generational efforts to reestablish Indigenous sovereignty over ancestral territories around the world, and seek to understand how cultural expression imagines, shapes, and informs debates around return and sovereignty. It will examine the intertwined nature of Indigenous arts, land rights, and issues such as environmental protections, land loss, and language; material expressions of place-based knowledge; cultural property laws such as NAGPRA; the relationship between federal and state recognition and arts, crafts and copyright laws; and global Indigenous sovereignty movements.
Eligible for ENVS.

Cross-listed as ARTH 065.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Eligible for ENVS
Fall 2025. Green.
Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies

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