In class this week, we began to make a schedule of topics for the remaining 10 lessons of the course. I made some suggestions based on your brainstorming, and I asked you all to fill in the course calendar in the Google Doc, here:

1. Your first task for homework is to take a look at the proposed schedule (there is a page of the document that says "Proposed schedule (please add your suggestions)" and continue adding topic suggestions to the dates listed there. 

Please consider the notes already made by your classmates and I when you add suggestions. Don't delete any suggestions, but it's okay to move suggestions to different dates if that makes sense. 

It's okay if there are two or three different suggestions for each date; we will sort it all out and finalize it next week in class. But I would like you to help me edit the calendar and make it into something that seems exciting and practical for you and the class.

Please enter your ideas by Tuesday evening. 

Since I don't want to ask you all to start your discussion leading so soon, I have decided to lead the discussions for the next two dates (Mar 1 and Mar 8). On these dates I will model for you some things I will expect from your group discussions later in the course. 

Next week in class, we will start forming the pairs for the discussions and then schedule your discussions, starting on March 15.

For next week, I'd like you to do some reading, some thinking and some note-taking.

The theme for this week will be "The US and Canada - indigenous people and the role of politics" which was someone's topic suggestion. The suggestion made me remember that I recently read an amazing book about this issue that I'd like to share with you. It's the book "Paying the Land" by Joe Sacco. 

It's a comic - or perhaps it's better to call it "graphic non-fiction." The author traveled to northern Canada to interview indigenous people there (the Dene tribe) about the history and the current state of their fight for self-determination. Then he wrote the book to tell their story in words and drawings.

I have chosen one section of the book to share with you, which focuses on the political deals which the different Dene tribes made with the Canadian government in the 1970s and 80. It's in PDF form below. Please download and read it:

The second text I'd like you to read is a very short news article by the CBC posted in 2021. You will see that the article refers to some historical context and some concepts that Joe Sacco's book also mentions (Treaty 11, and the concept of "divide and conquer") that the Canadian government has used to manipulate the Dene people:

2. After you have read these two texts, I'd like you to write ONE discussion question for each text, which we will take up in class next week. 

These should be questions that you, your classmates, and I can debate about. They should not be just yes/no questions, or questions which can be answered only with factual info. They should be questions that get us thinking and talking about the deeper issues behind the texts. 

Post your discussion questions in the class Google Doc, under the heading "Week 3: Mar 1."

For each text, I have posted two examples there to show you what I mean. 

Please post ONE discussion question for EACH of the two texts. There are 10 of you in the class, so that means that at the beginning of class next week, I should see 10 questions for each text (underneath my two).  

3. Finally, please find and copy down into your own notes ONE new or relatively unfamiliar vocabulary word or phrase from the readings which you would like to share with the class and put into our vocabulary bank. 

When you choose your word, please COPY the whole sentence from the course into your notes, put the sentence into quotation marks ("")  to remind you that it is a quotation, and mark down the page number (or paragraph number) where you found the word in the text. 

You do not need to post this word yet - I will ask you to do that next week in class. I have already posted the words from last week's class at the bottom of the Google Doc. We will continue to add to this list as the course continues.