This course was excellent! I learned a great deal as it went into depth into so many areas. My only issue was how extensive and time consuming the course was. I also think that is one of it's strengths as it was so through. I took a course in university and other courses in Indigenous History and this is by far the most comprehensive and rewarding. I really appreciate that it is not a history course, but it is more contextual and celebrates modern and future Indigenous life in Canada. It is forward thinking, comprehensive and an excellent course. The multi-media within the course really helped the material come to life for me.

What an excellently well done course. Content well covered, speakers spoke clearly and at an easy pace to listen to. Appreciated that there was a reading to go along with the different speakers to cover different learning styles. The art work done by Leah Dorion and her explanations of each piece was definitely a huge complement to the course. I am Canadian and of course heard very little about the history of Canada and very mixed and prejudicial stories about Canada's first peoples. I intend to pursue more information through other venues to help me deeper my understanding of the Indigenous Peoples. Thank you so much!

This was a very eye-opening course, and one that showed me a different side of Canadian history than the one that was taught to me growing up. The course helped me realize the racist beliefs that have been taught and that still exists today. The course taught me to open my eyes and ears and heart to learning more, so that I can grow and move forward towards reconciliation with our nation. Reconciliation with what has happened and trying to right the wrong and provide opportunities to the Indigenous communities is extremely crucial for our nation to move forward and grow together. Thank you for creating this course. Thank you!

I found this course very informative and presented ia ab easy to understand format. The impact of the Europeans is astonishing that what they did was try to conquer and divide the diverse and different Indigenous Peoples of Canada. This course really made me aware of all the issues they have and rightly so. I've always been interested in knowing more about our first peoples in this vast land we call Canada and this course helped immensely. I'll strive to learn more and pay more attention to what's happening in current relations between the Colonists and the Indigenous Peoples. We collectively could learn a lot more from them.

Thank you! My son's long-time partner is from Leqamel First Nation with ancestry also from Squamish and Katzie First Nations. She encourages all of us to learn more about who she is as an Indigenous person and we are all very proud of her and who she is. This course is not the end of learning about Indigenous Peoples for me, but the beginning. I will continue to reach out and strive to learn more. Indigenous Canada, presented through UoA is a great program and something that all Non-Indigenous People should consider in order to educate themselves about Canadian history, but the history of Indigenous Peoples of Canada.

Thanks for offering the course! It has greatly helped me understand the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, including their culture, their beliefs and their identity struggle.

I came to know this course during the ED&I week held by the company I work with. I love indigenous arts and this course makes me appreciate it even more. The course also inspires me to look more at the underlined meaning of each individual indigenous art piece.

I recognize that although the Canadian governments at both federal and Provencial level have done a much better job compared to the past, there are still much more to be done for indigenous peoples.

This course covered so much Indigenous history in context with Colonialism that I did not previously know. I have learned so much about culture, community, the fur trade, the Indian Act, residential schools, and how the affects of Colonialism and European patriarchall policies have affected, and continue to affect the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. I believe that through all of the topcs that were covered I have just started on a journey to learn more and become an ally of Indigenous Peoples. Thank you so much for making this course free, and thank you to all of the people who participated in the making of this course.

Now that I've completed the course, I'm going to miss the sessions! I learned much, and re-learned things I used to know and will return to in my work. I am particularly interested in re-matiration of the narratives of Indigenous life, both in the past, and also in today's fluid kaleidoscope of a world. I thought the inclusion of Leah's colourful and storyful artwork was inspiring and did in fact both ground the messaging and free the thought process...our speakers had a lot of acreage to cover, and did a grand job of communicating breadth and depth, and they are to be commended for their accomplishment here.

Well done ALL!

This was an eye opening course for me. Living in Treaty 6 territory my entire life, I knew of the hardship (that seems like an understated word) that was imposed on the First Peoples in Canada but I didn't understand how it effected the First Peoples. I almost feel ashamed to call myself Canadian. What the settlers did was nothing short of terror and unjust. I will call myself a Canadian that lives in Treaty 6 territory. Thank you for allowing me to be apart of this. I will seek to understand and change my language to support all First People in Canada. Thank you, your culture and way of life is nothing short of beautiful.

Excellent introduction to Indigenous history, culture, life, art, music and community knowledge. I am so grateful to have been given access to this course material through Coursera and, as an alumni of the University of Alberta, I am proud to be associated with this work. Learning about how Indigenous societies managed illegal behavior has forever changed my thinking about the current challenges of our legal system; seperating people from society without an expectation of addressing the loss and hurt between families seems short-sighted to me now. I am excited to learn more from the Faculty of Native Studies, thank you!

Bonjour,

J'ai vraiment apprécié ce cours et aussi la motivation des professeurs , Tracy, Alannah et Isaac, qui étaient tous les trois très intéressants à écouter. Evidemment , selon leurs conseils, j'ai continué la recherche sur l'histoire des Nations du Canada. Il était temps que je suive ce cours et je le recommande à tous les Canadiens.

D'autre part , je serais intéressé à améliorer la partie française de ce cours pour mieux identifier les paragraphes et les notes pour faciliter le suivi.

Merci beaucoup à Tracy, Alannah et Isaac

Alain Villeneuve, Ste Pétronille (Québec), Ile d'Orléans, refuge des Wandats en 1651

I am so grateful that this course exists, as we did not get an understanding of indigenous history at all when I was attending school. It was all about the explorers and their conquests. It saddens me tremendously that this entire group of people had their evolution arrested, and there will never be any way of knowing how things would have been now, if their beautiful and noble trajectory had not been so forcefully interrupted and re-positioned.

Thank you for distilling this story into a course, and I do hope that many Canadians will take advantage of the course's availability, to help fill in the gaps a little.

Peace

Additional facts and truth reshape and strengthen our history our minds and Canadian culture and diversity. This course has the potential to base a grade school and high school segment to awareness and Canadian history. My grade 4 teacher 1969 to his credit covered an impressive amount of information that is also in this course. His teachings were respectful factual and remembered and I now realize a man before his time teaching diversity. This course brought back those cherished teachings and so much more awareness into Indigenous Canada . Awareness can be a daily goal no matter how big or how small it is learning

This course was extremely informative and well done. All of my secondary and post-secondary education as a Canadian skimmed the surface of the founding of Canada and of course it was all from the settler perspective. I so appreciate how well laid out the course was and I find myself correcting people now as issues come up and redirecting them to proper information sources. My daughter is in her last year of college to become a Child and Youth worker and just completed the certificate version of this course on my advice as well. She found it very enlightening and is going on to complete San'yas studies too. Thank you

Well developed and present course. Great balance between important reminders and new learning. I especially appreciated that the presenters/instructors were of First Nations descent. I'd highly recommend to anybody want a solid starting point and foundation to help them better understand the basics Canadian Indigenous life pre-colonization to current day. Once you understand what really happened in history, you'll appreciate why things are not right today; and, if you have a heart you'll not only empathize and sympathize with our Indigenous population, but you'll want to contribute towards truth and reconciliation.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course. It was well presented and the format was easy to follow. I majored in Native Studies and got my degree from Trent University ,Peterborough Ontario in 1978. I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to take the course and increase my knowledge . It was disappointing to learn that the same issues that were of great concern in the 1970's are still being discussed today with the Federal Government. Hopefully with courses like this the general public will become more informed and support for Aboriginal causes will increase. Thank you for making this course available for anyone to take.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course, and the instructors! It has provided me with a much broader understanding of Canada before and since colonization, and of the painful and poignant struggles that the Indigenous peoples of this land have endured at the "divide and conquer" whims of colonial and European powers. I am most impressed with the resilience and the power of community action of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in Canada to effect positive change for all. I will highly recommend this course to my colleagues here at Western U. It was my first MOOC and I'm happy it was with you, Professor Bear! Miigwetch!!

This well constructed and designed course offers an excellent introduction to native peoples from a variety of perspectives....anthropological, geographic, historical, cultural, philosophical, political, spiritual, artistic. The teachings are clear and the mixed used of lecture, interview, image and quiz carries one of an engaging journey which can be taken an one's own pace and in one's own time. I'm an American MDiv in Interfaith Spirituality and Comparative Religion and found this a valuable addition to my repertoire of knowledge. Thank you to the scholars at the University of Alberta who developed this course.

This course is compreshensive as can be touching on the historical and modern culture of Aboriginals and their mistreatment. I appreciate they try to touch on all subjects within the time limit of this course and it will never be enough because there is so much more to learn and understand. The only thing I would like see changed would be to add more interviews of people living today and their challenges. While it is discussed, seeing those plights will hopefully give people a new understanding that continue to exist today. I recommend checking out some of the vast documentaries that can help demonstrate this.

I have learned a considerable amount from this course. Most importantly, I became aware of how different my view of community is from the various forms of Indigenous community covered in the content. I answered many of the questions incorrectly in the multiple choice quizzes because I do not have a strong sense community as it is expressed in this course. Reviewing the notes and retaking the quizzes helped improve my understanding. I would need to live a different life to be able to know these answers right away. However, knowing the difference and understanding my lack of comprehension has improved my character.

This course was well structured and gave me an overview of Indigenous history in Canada. It has also given me a hunger to explore so much more of that history, such as treaties and the progress being made in areas such as land use and conservation, and of course the burgeoning Aboriginal arts communities. I am heartened that the First Peoples of Canada are gaining recognition and being celebrated for their contributions to Canada's culture. We have so much to learn from those who have inhabited this country for thousands of years. Thank you for creating this course, which has inspired me to explore so much more.

Unbelievable, yet the most believable teaching of history that I have taken. Where I thought my schooling lacked, I was astonished to learn the scope of what was missed, avoided, and continues to exist in today's teachings of Indigenous culture. This course should not be optional for anyone over the age 25. It has opened, my already open, eyes to a world so much greater than my own. All I can say is taking this course is a MUST DO. It is intriguing, heart breaking, and insightful. Thank you to the U of A, and all involved for the creation and delivery of this program. I will echo it's praises for years to come.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for creating and offering this essential course! I learned so much and enjoyed doing so throughout these 12 weeks. I especially appreciated the course material on the Fur Trade and the Treaties. So glad Dan Levy recommended this course, as I would never have known about it otherwise! Can't recommend this course enough -- every Canadian should take this. I also liked how there were videos of the material which made it more engaging for me. Thank you again, from an Acadian living as a guest on the traditional and unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi'kmaq peoples.

AS a social worker, working with Indigenous peoples, I feel that everyone in Canada should take this course. In school, the portrayal of Indigenous peoples was not even close to the truth. Indigenous peoples were viewed as simple, unorganized, and violent. This course presents the truth of Indigenous histories across Canada and other parts of the globe. This course assists with understanding why the Indigenous families we work with, are having the issues they have. GREAT COURSE!!! I have spoken to government heads of child welfare and encouraged them to have their staff all take this course. Thank you for this

I found this course to be a very informative overview of the subject. Excellent instructors made the subjects accessible and easy to understand. Being non-Indigenous and in my 50s, all of my schooling took place in a white-washed environment - I learned nothing about Indigenous people or the terrible treatment meted out to them by Canada. This course has given me a firm foundation to build on as I relearn the history of this land, and more importantly the people who have been here from time immemorial. The course notes are an excellent resource that I will refer to often in the course of my continued learning.