Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/Federal Indian Law and Policy (Kristin Ruppel)

Getting Started
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Course description
In this course, we cover some of the most important issues affecting American Indian lives and livelihoods, the histories of these issues from a legal perspective, and the generations of actors who have pursued, and continue to pursue, resolution of these issues through legal, legislative, and other means.

Course goals
By the end of this course, students should be able to do at least the following:
 * Critique current issues in Indian Country in legal and historical terms.
 * Analyze Indian legal issues from the different perspectives involved (e.g., Indian, non-Indian…), and draw conclusions based on often complex and confusing sets of facts rather than assumptions and stereotypes.
 * Understand the ongoing influences and consequences of colonialism for indigenous as well as non-indigenous people/s.
 * Recognize the relative nature of all legal systems, and apply this recognition to your growing appreciation of the ideal of a pluralistic society.

Assignment overview
There are many details to work out but we'll be taking the following approach to creating Wikipedia assignments for ~24 undergraduates and 6 graduate students. The class will be introduced to this approach in Monday, January 24th. Once the entire class understands the basic approach, the Campus Ambassador will meet separately with the 6 graduate students to get them moving.

The approach: Using the 4 course goals in the syllabus as a basis, the 6 graduate students will collaboratively produce a comprehensive literature review on the subject of Federal Indian Law and Policy. This will be produced most likely as a subpage to this course page Federal Indian Law and Policy Literature Review. As part of the literature review, the grad students will identify the major gaps in WP articles and content relative to the course goals. This analysis will become the basis for establishing individual undergraduate assignments. What we expect to flow out of this review and analysis will be several types of articles and content work--notable biographies, events, legislation, case law, bibliographies, literature, etc. Addtionally, as a direct result of the review and analysis the grad students should be able to publish in the article space a comphensive annotated bibliography of Federal Indian Law and Policy and an Outline of Federal Indian Law and Policy (ie mapping all the related articles on the subject in WP). An additional outcome of the review and analysis may be the opportunity to write WP articles on key and important literature on the subject. Once assignments for undergraduates become clear, each graduate student will also take a mentoring role (subject matter wise) for a small number of undergraduates.

Students
This is a list of the students in your class (or rather their Wikipedia usernames), along with their Wikipedia articles (which students will select at the appropriate time).

Office Hours
Montana State University Wikipedia Ambassador Office Hours will start on Wed. Feb.9th. The Wikipedia Ambassador Office Hours are: The Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors office is on the 4th floor, room 414, of Renne Library. It is easily accessible from elevator or stairs, and has a Wikipedia Ambassadors sign on the door. We ask all students to remember the office is located in a “quiet study” area.
 * Wed. 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
 * Thr. 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
 * or by appointment, contact Ambassadors: McMormor or Mike Cline