American Indian Studies

Overview

The American Indian Studies BA program offered at San Francisco State University has an emphasis in the curriculum placed on duality links the concerns of tribal communities with academic rigor, enabling our faculty to harness their expertise and passion for teaching in ways that lead to greater student cultural competence and prepares them to meet high expectations.

The curriculum is focused on four areas of emphasis:

• California Indian Studies;

• American Indian Creative Arts and Humanities;

• Law, Politics, and Society; and

• Science, Health, and Environmental Studies.

The knowledge base within these areas prepare students to work academically – and in advocacy – with both tribal and urban Native communities within California and the United States. The courses comprising the B.A. challenge students to actively question the most ingrained myths about American Indians, the roles they have played in the United States and internationally over time, and the goals of historical and contemporary cultural maintenance and revitalization movements.

Program Learning Outcomes:

Completing the Bachelor of Arts in American Indian Studies (AIS) empowers students to do the following:

• Students will understand the complex histories, politics, and social issues confronting Native peoples in the context of U.S. colonization, imperialism, and globalization. This understanding will include awareness of the diverse political strategies used by Native peoples to confront the historical legacies of dispossession, genocide, and social inequity and discrimination, including legal action for land restoration and cultural conservation/revitalization efforts.

• Students will compare and contrast the uniqueness of Native epistemologies and their articulation in contemporary forms of cultural media, such as through literature and the creative arts.

• Students will gain invaluable experiential knowledge through community service learning, as a way of connecting classroom education to career preparation and advisement.

• Students will develop the necessary analytical, oral communication, information literacy, and writing skills to prepare them for careers or graduate school in areas related to American Indian Studies.

Career paths

An American Indian Studies major provides a diverse foundation of knowledge and skills that can be applied to a number of careers. American Indian Studies alumni have and can anticipate securing employment in: agricultural and pastoral enterprises, environmental and cultural rights organizations, ethnography and cultural programs, health care and social work, media and communications industries, museums and cultural centers, teaching, tribal businesses and government, the traditional arts, and federal and state agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Indian Health Services, National and State Park Services, Title IX Indian Education Program, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Department of Labor.