Religion and the Afro-Native Experience

Black and Native American peoples have a shared history of oppression in the Americas. The prevailing lenses scholars use to understand settler colonialism and race however, tend to focus on the dynamics between Europeans and these respective groups. How might our understanding of these subjects shift when viewed from a different point of departure? Specifically, how does religion structure and inform the overlapping experiences of Afro-Native peoples? From enslavement in the Cotton Belt and California to political movements in Minneapolis and New York, this class will explore how diverse communities of Africans, Native Americans, and their descendants adapted to shifting contexts of race and religion in the vast territories that are today the United States. The course will proceed thematically by examining experiences of identity, dislocation, survival, and diaspora.