E-400 & E-600 American Indian Gender & Sexuality
ANTHROPOLOGY
Spring 2006

	This seminar class will address some American Indians' tribal
understandings and viewpoints on gender and sexuality identities, its
cultural obligations, duties and roles.  The creation stories (or
tribal folklores) of a couple of tribes' will be use to explore the
Native cultural constructions of sex, sexuality and gender identities.
Native constructs of gender terms such as man and woman will be
clarified and explicitly dichotomized from sex, sexual and sexuality,
for a better understanding of the differences between Indigenous and
Western genders and sexualities.

	Native narratives readings will be one of bases for topical
discussions in the seminar.  In addition, multiple tribal rites of
passages will be elucidated on how gender identities changes due to
these processes.  Western concept of heterosexuality, homosexuality,
bisexuality and Others will be covered using both Western and
Indigenous theories.  Toward the end of the semester, the changes in
American Indian gender roles of man, woman and Others will be
addressed within the framework of the ever-presence of acculturation
and assimilation.