Program Overview

The Indigenous Studies minor at Lafayette College is an interdisciplinary program encompassing academic disciplines from the Arts, Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. It centers Indigenous peoples’ diverse histories and cultures, as well as arts, ecologies, economies, identities, knowledge, languages, literatures, music, politics, and religions. 

Lafayette College is based in the homelands of the Lenape (aka Delaware) people. We are growing relationships and developing exciting programs with two of the federally recognized Nations of Lenape people: Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians. Both of their tribal headquarters are now based in Oklahoma as a result of forced removal from their homelands here in eastern PA and NJ. Some of our courses now include work in allyship with these Nations, and others will be taught or co-taught with tribal representatives.

Students completing a minor in Indigenous Studies will enhance their capacity to understand how the experiences of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous ways of knowing and doing have both been affected by colonialism and settler colonialism. This capacity will also enable students to reflect on their positionality in the world, paying particular attention to locations, institutions, power, privilege and cultural practices.

Requirements

The minor in Indigenous Studies consists of five courses from the course list below, with few restrictions. Please note that no more than two courses from the same department can count towards fulfilling this minor requirement. To prevent major/minor overlap, if a student has declared a major in a department offering courses that also count towards this minor, no more than two of those courses can count for both this minor and towards completing that major program. Starred courses are applicable pending review by the advisory committee.  

Course Offerings

* Starred courses count for the minor on a case by case basis, upon approval by program committee.