This course is about examining the Salish Sea through multiple disciplinary lenses in order to appreciate the complexity of this region. This project will allow you to dig deeper into one facet of this region pursuing an area of interest by asking a question to which there is no apparent known answering an effort to expand our larger collective knowledge about this region. This project is both a way to synthesize much of what you've been learning in this class through a multidisciplinary lens, but it also will help you practice other important life skills like effective communication and building collaboration skills.
This is a parallel track to ANTH 235, Cross Cultural Medicine that focuses on the health impacts of climate disasters, including trauma, grief and anxiety. Students then have the opportunity to visualize a future when the earth recovers its health. What does that look like? How does it happen?
Students write a one-to-two-page letter to apply their knowledge and analysis to a contemporary issue and develop a position that reflects their research on the issue. Resources for locating a leader in a trans-border region with multiple jurisdictions on the Canadian and U.S. sides of the border is provided in the weeks leading up to this letter-writing assignment.
The lesson introduces students to archaeology as a way of knowing the “deep history” of the Salish Sea and presents a brief review of the archaeology of the region. We also discuss the importance of this history to modern peoples today, including the necessity for archaeologists to collaborate with Indigenous communities.
The exercise is aimed to help students explain the basic chronology of culture history in the Salish Sea and identify important local archaeological sites and/or traditional cultural places on both sides of the international border.
A field trip to a local museum allows students to interact with and learn from material items from the Salish Sea and also encourages students to think about the ethics of museum representation and Indigenous collaboration.
This activity is designed to provide students with differing perspectives on the future of salmon within the Salish Sea using interview data with different stakeholders in the region.
This hybrid course was co-taught by a historian and an anthropologist. Class meetings were online via Zoom and in person for field trips. The quarter-long project involved working with a Geographic Information System (GIS) specialist to develop a Story Map about the Whatcom Creek Watershed.
This (virtual) lab component for the Introduction to the Salish Sea course supports students' engagement in independent experiential learning using walks, reading, podcasts, recorded lectures, and tracing local ecology.
How do we connect stories of people to place? The objective of this three-part project is to make the connection between the forced removal of Bellingham’s Punjabi community in 1907 to the history of Bellingham’s contested waterfront.
