This was an informative, sometimes quite moving and educational course on the history of indigenous people in Canada, and their ongoing perspectives and struggles. Having been educated in the French school system in Canada in the 70s, I knew that I had learned a distorted and slanted version of the indigenous people and their experience throughout colonization. I appreciated learning a new perspective, which helped challenge my existing knowledge and opinions, and encouraged me to change and grow. The three presenters were excellent speakers. Thank you!

I would like to offer a couple of suggestions to enhance the experience of the course. I believe that I might have retained more information, as a visual learner, if more interviews, pictures and videos of places and events, and more artwork had been integrated within the lectures. For example, the beautiful visual course artwork should have been integrated, rather than presented at the end of each lecture, in my opinion. "A picture is worth a thousand words". I understand and appreciate that you are academics, but sometimes the lecture style and detailed information became a little heavy for this type of introduction, I think.

In conclusion, I wish to thank all involved in presenting and offering this inspiring course.

I appreciated the material and how it was delivered. It could have had more examples from the east coast. The presenters were all well-spoken and knowledgeable on the topics that they were delivering. I especially liked the cameo appearances of Professor Tall Bear and her brief lectures on Genetics and Indigenous Feminism. I believe that a lot of time and effort were put into the lessons, but I think more focus is needed on some of the quiz questions. Assessments should consist of the main ideas the lecturer is focused on and what they want the students to take away from the lesson; not something that is not significant or barely mentioned. It was difficult to decide on what notes to take, as the lecturer could have spent a significant time discussing a subtopic and there was nothing on the quiz about that subtopic. As an educator, I would probably use about 50% of the questions. Also, there were “glitches” with the technology, as several times the quiz would “freeze” and when I tried to click the screen would eventually work but the click would change an answer (depending on where I had the mouse) or submit it when I was not finished. This happened 3-4 times. Thankfully, we could try again.

Thanks very much for putting this course together and providing an overview of Indigenous Peoples and their history of interaction with settler peoples. The course achieved one key objective (for me) and that is to send me to learn more about the situation for Indigenous groups here in Nova Scotia - which the course only briefly touched on (Peace and Friendship Treaty). My criticism of the course would be in the types of questions asked during testing. To ask specifics around - for example - which artist's work was first to be accepted into the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is testing memorization and facts, rather than "knowledge". I have already forgotten the name of that artist, as important has he/she is. Rather, it would make more lasting learning, in this example, to ask about the barriers to acceptance in mainstream galleries and museums for Indigenous artists. Throughout the course/testing I found several examples of this type of evaluation and didn't find it helpful to my own learning journey. The presenters were great and once again, I thank you for this opportunity. Diane Mackie - dmackie@ideaspace.ca

I thought the course was highly informative and thought-provoking, and gave an eye-opening perspective on Indigenous life and the issues aboriginal people face. There have been some horrible atrocities in the past, and there is still lack of understanding today. While I lived for a year among the Haida in Masset and have been friends with a Metis woman for years, this course has given me a far greater understanding and respect for Indigenous world view, laws, family relationships and other aspects of culture, and I appreciate having been made more aware. I could not help feeling, however, that everything was being said with a victim mentality that Indigenous people, like all victim groups, are unwilling or unable to let go of, and it resulted in settler society being vilified in virtually every way. Are we really that evil? Indigenous people, their rights and culture deserve to be respected but it's an ever changing world, one in which we all live and are all entitled to, and we need to find ways to live together in harmony. I thank you all for putting together this wonderful course.

I found this course to be extremely enlightening, I was educated in England, I now live in Canada, I was not taught any indigenous history, art, geography or anything in my British education. So for me everything presented was new, and some of it very heart wrenching. I feel some areas were skimmed over, but I take that as this course being a "taster", with much more learning/information available should I so choose.

Some feed back on the technical aspects of the course:

1. Often the questions were not truly reflective of the video's or the written material. Often a correct answer was marked in correct, but marked as "correct" on a retake.

2. In some respects I felt the true indigenous spirit and truth was being tainted by the bias of the presenters.

3. I really enjoyed the videos/presentations of other indigenous teachers, artists etc. there should be more of these.

4. Perhaps include more that one "pop quiz" question in the video.

Otherwise, this was truly awesome eye opening course, which has really raised my awareness of indigenous life, history, culture and traditions.

Thank you ,

Thank you for a great course! I think every Grade 12 student in Canada should take this course, as it really fleshes out indigenous history from early contact to the present day. I feel I am much better informed now - and I have had a fair amount of study and work with indigenous people in my west coast area over my lifetime. I gave the course 4/5 as I am quite a critical student, coming from a teaching background myself. There were some areas of the course that could have been a little clearer, as some quiz questions were not covered I believe. I could be wrong on this of course. I found that the punctuation and other grammatical errors were distracting. (It may have been transcription from dictation that caused this, but sometimes changed the meaning.) Regardless of these small criticisms it was a very very interesting and enlightening course. I'd highly recommend it to other Canadians.

PS Not sure if copyright was an issue, but I would have loved to see examples of the artists' work alongside the lectures and text. I did search it out on my own as was suggested.

As Dr. Bear stated, this is an excellent primer course. It gave me food for thought, changed my prospective in many ways and in some case showed me how narrow minded some people can be. As a primer program it has done its job, as I have looked further into those aspects of the course that peeked my interest. I have a much better understanding of why some things are the way they are and I think somewhat of an understanding of why they will be so difficult to change.

I rated this program as a 4 star only because I found a number of question with too many ambiguous answers available, which, at times left me guessing which answer the author had in their mind when formulating the questions.

All in all I would recommend this course as a great starting point to anyone wishing to learn about Indigenous Canada, or for that matter how racial divides begin and then progress to the point of all out racism.

I would like to thank Dr. Bear, her staff and the University of Alberta for putting this program together and affording me the opportunity to participate in it.

A bit wordy and dry at times BUT... overall, filled with content that I wish we as non-Indigenous Canadians were introduced to long ago. It was eye-opening and I felt embarassed at how little I really knew. How would I though?! Sadly, much of this information just hasn't been a part of our mainstream knowledge in Canada, and it absolutely without a question should be. As a child of the 90's and early 2000's, I remember some Indigenous content being inserted here and there in our curriculums, but without any sort of relevance or context. The delivery was confusing and the proper attention was not given to it. While this course is a great introduction to Indigenous education, I would love to see more of it out there in many different forms. In the meantime, I will do my best to spread the word about this course, and the things that I've learned through taking it. Just wanted to add, honestly, my favorite part was Leah Dorion's artwork! She was such a delight to listen to and her artwork alone told so much of the stories that need to be heard!

Thank you for this primer on the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. It is foundational and provides a solid context for me as a Canadian citizen alongside our Aboriginal People. It has displaced some of my ignorance and has left me somewhat disgusted/stunned by our treatment of these people. Even more, I am stunned by the grace and patience of our Indigenous Peoples as a whole towards us as colonizers. The rest of Canada has much to learn from its first citizens. As for the component pieces of the course - I thought the video presenters were clear and easy to understand, I loved that they were all First Nations individuals, I loved the interview overlays, I loved the music, I thought the course content was excellent, and I loved the 6 pieces of commissioned art work for the course by Leah - awesome! If I had any criticisms they would only be that the transcript (at times) didn't match the video content and that I found some of the quiz questions a little bit tricky to understand what was being asked. Otherwise, I thought the course was excellent.

I found this course to be valuable overall! I think that seeing the history all put together in one cohesive class was helpful to understanding the big picture of how Indigenous people have been treated poorly and I gained a greater understanding of Indigenous worldview and their connection to the earth. The course material prompted me to read more on my own about certain events I'd never heard of (such as the Starlight tours). I learned the most from the first half of the course and thought that some of the later lessons were overly generic which led them to be not very informative (e.g., part about Indigenous people in cities, social media) which is why I am rating the class 4 stars instead of 5. Also, I felt that some of the data, statistics and examples in this course could use some updating to be more recent. I was hoping for more recent updates related to residential schools, information on prejudice in the heatlhcare system, progress on the TRC calls to action, and information about the child welfare system.

Wonderful breadth of history starting largely with contact. A lot of information covered in a very short time!

The presenters did a fabulous job and the video interviews were exceptional in bringing the course content to life. (I would like to single out some of the interviewees but really they all did an extraordinary job providing context and insight.)

The course felt like it meandered a bit between history (i.e., treaties and court cases) and anthropology (i.e., world views and language), so I wasn't always sure where the lessons were heading.

The language was not consistently academic or objective. There were various loaded references such as referring to other parties as "spewing" information or to resource extraction as flatly "destructive." I was caught off guard by use of the word "we" by the presenters -- as this detracted from the academic tone. That is probably better left to the interview segments.

But, all in all, I am very happy to have had the opportunity and I looked forward to the lessons.

Very interesting material and overall I found the content to be well explained and detailed and I enjoyed learning despite hearing about some horrifying events. Well, I was aware of the inhuman and heartbreakingly poor treatment of indigenous people throughout various times , such as residential schools, removing people from their land, sixties scoop, the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, I did not know the length and detail of such oppression to these people and I really think if every Canadian took this course we might compelled to be more empathetic and really make a concerted effort at reconcilliation. This course is an excellent introduction and I am compelled to do my part in my day to day encounters in Canadian society to make sure this never happens again and is remedied. I will continue to listen and learn about current issues and continue my learning about Indigenous people. Thankyou for all the interviews and time taken to make this course available to anyone who wants to learn.

I really enjoyed this course! I signed up to take an Indigenous course through University of Toronto and couldn't finish as it was almost all lectures recorded of one person talking at the front of a dated-looking classroom. This course was full of so much information, I was engaged throughout and learned a lot. I didn't give 5 stars because I think some of the test questions should be rethought. Some were confusing. A straightforward answer to be selected from a few for me is the best way to solidify the information I learned. One example is the final test regarding how many artists were members of PNIAI. There were 7 co-founders and original members included 6 others. I selected 7, which was incorrect. But the question only asked how many members. Didn't mention original members, co-founders. So possibly the answer is 13? Anyway, there were a couple throughout the course that I think would have been better with more direct questions/answers. Thanks again for a FANTASTIC course!

Great course that provided a very broad overview of the history of colonialism in Canada and the on going relationships between the various first nations and settler society. At the same time if also delved deeply enough into Indigenous cultures to give me a much better understanding of the nuances in the many many first nations that have inhabited this land for millennia. I had the very good fortune of seeing Jackson Beardy when he would visit is at Ecole Sacre Coeur where I used to attend with his son Jason in the 1970s. That has left a deep impression on me and so I was happy to see his name mentioned in the section on art. My only suggestion is for some minor updates on the historical developments in Winnipeg as of late with respect to the development of the former Kap-Yong army barricks and the Hudson's Bay building in downtown Winnipeg. Some of the reading materials need a more through edit for spelling and words omitted. Aside from that this was very worthwhile. Thanks!

This course contains a lot of useful information and yet is quite concise. It could be higher quality in terms of interaction and production - but it's also being offered for free. It gives a nice starting point for further research. It is an important community service to make it available to the general public, and it also makes it easy to share with friends and colleagues. One question I had throughout is regarding the way in which it solidly follows settler cultural norms of education - while I see how this is practical, I also kept wondering if there's not any way to incorporate some of the Indigenous education models described in actual practice in the course. This might seem antithetical to an online course, but on the other hand, what we are seeing constantly (especially in this Covid era) is a lot of innovation around online content. And it's a point made in the course that Indigenous cultures are innovative and continually adapting to new situations, modalities etc.

I learned a lot through this course - things I had often heard about in the media, but really didn't know much about the background. It was very enlightening this way. I have been very interested in the struggle with the Wet'suwet'en as I lived in that valley for many years and have seen their camps and understand their frustrations and struggles. I did feel a "proof reading " of the material would have been helpful as sometimes I was having difficulty making sense of what was written (I seldom used the videos in this course, as I have limited Internet Usage. I did use it for reviewing the paintings - which I enjoyed - and for certain parts that caught my attention). Otherwise I had to rely on the written subject matter. I would recommend it to friends that wish to further their knowledge of Indigenous History and Contemporary Life. I have always been very interested in Indigenous art and I have has several Indigenous friends and co-workers. Thankyou.

Most areas of this course rate 5/5 stars. The discussion on Sundays was very interesting and informative and brought the course to life. The information, graphics, lectures and content was all excellent. My only complaint is the quizzes. As a mature learner, I do not remember everything I hear. I expected the answers to all the quiz questions to be found in the notes provided, and this was not the case. I had to Google some things to find the answer. Some questions were worded in a confusing manner, or gave answer choices that could conceivably be correct, but were marked incorrect because a certain answer was required. Also, there were some spelling mistakes through the visual presentation and written material. Overall, I would recommend this course for every single Canadian, particularly settlers, who should understand where modern day Indigenous issues and racism stem from. I would definitely sign up for more free Indigenous courses. Thank you.

Again, great course, instructors and content were amazing. I really learned so much. The only reason this review isn't 5/5: absolutely awful testing. The questions are so hyper-focused on specific micro-details on reading content, it doesn't help measure or test one's understanding of the broader concepts taught in the course. And even when testing on micro-details, the details in the question are often wrong lol. There are questions where the multiple-choice options are so similar and sometimes both contained in the text. I would at least fix this as it looks slack, but more importantly, I would do a re-think on the testing to better make it align with the overall course goals as well as with what the people taking the course are looking to get out of it (ensuring they understand concepts, not annoying the crap out of them to make sure they read the random fact you're asking a super specific, possibly-not-even-matching-the-text question about)

I appreciate how this course was set up overall. It was very functional and I particularly liked the art videos with Leah Dorion. The content itself was very informative and was done in a chronological order that made sense. I appreciated the interviews that were videoed and done. Unfortunately, about 3/4 of the way through, it often became a politically motivated course in which the white man were always bad. It was biased to some degree. While I understand that colonialism is ultimately responsible for destroying Indigenous society, there was very little about many destructive manners that some Indigenous people continue to use today regardless of the services that are offered to them. Perhaps a less biased approach, looking at both sides to the coin would have been more effective. Nonetheless, the culture and content explored in the course was very informative and I would use the materials to educate others on the topic itself.

The content of the course is very good. It presents important information and viewpoints most of which was missing from the Canadian History that I was taught while in school. It certainly provides a foundation for improved understanding of, and empathy for, the indigenous peoples of Canada and North America. It also provides a perspective that is not always well conveyed by the media with current affairs relating to indigenous peoples. The delivery of the course is somewhat lacking. More use of multi-media and interactivity in presentation of the information would have made the course far more engaging. The vast majority of the course consists of a presenter reading the content, which is not an effective method of conveying the information in a memorable fashion.

I am glad that I took the course and am grateful that the University of Alberta and the Faculty of Native Studies have made the Indigenous Canada course available.

I am interested in learning about the original people of this land that I have adopted - I am from India and arrived her 38years ago. While my children were growing up I did not see a lot of content related to the Indigenous peoples but they were curious and with them my curiosity also grew.

Then I met some wonderful people growing Seneca and Mohawk corn via ceremony in a park right by my house - my contact with them and learning from them piqued my interest and I was so excited to have an opportunity to learn more.

I truly enjoyed learning from this course - so much is included in a Nutshell. I would recommend this course to others (I already have). The reason I cannot give it a 5 start is because of typos, and some times the way it is presented is a bit confusing.

Thank you to the University of Alberta for this opportunity to learn the Truth of this beautiful land.

Thank you Coursera for the platform you have created .

This course is a definitely a really good primer for a topic that is otherwise inadequately discussed in public school curricula. I found that there was maybe not enough time spend discussing discourse and power structures that work to maintain the status quo. The nature of the course being a primer, left me wanting more discussion of the tools of colonialism and how law was used to other, and disempower indigenous people. I felt that it did a great job at creating a perspective of indigenous resilience, but would have like to have seen more about the betrayal of indigenous people during the process of nation building. My education has involved a fairly significant delve into indigenous issues in Canada to begin with, so maybe my lens is skewed as to what the average person would take from it. Over all, I liked the course and the presenters and felt that this was a great into to Canadian Indigenous issues. Thank you!

Thank you for this very valuable opportunity. I now have a greater understanding and appreciation for the richness of the Indigineous cultures that were highlighted. I feel some shame that my understanding of "canadian History" was from such a strong settler perspective given what I was taught in school almost forty years ago.

I loved the artwork that was commissioned and created by Leah Dorion. Her work was vibrant and compelling! This component was a lovely addion to the course work and no doubt appreciated by all of the visual learners!

I recognize that this course is now a few years old however, it would be beneficial to have some of the course content updated when time and resources allow. I noticed some material was out of date when at times I would look up certain events, resources, and people just to satisfy my own personal interest.

With graditude I thank you again for this opportunity.

I only hesitate to give the 5th star because the course needs desperately needs to be proofread. It appears the text of the lectures has been rendered via speech recognition software and has yet to be thoroughly checked over. There wasn't a single module without mistakes; not one! The content is fantastic and I'm certain I will be re-reading the course notes and revisiting the lectures to further commit this vital information to memory. Kudos to all involved in developing the course and its execution, thank you.

I learn best (pretty much exclusively!!) by reading so the inaccuracies in transcription (unseeded instead of unceded, can instead of can't... there are many!) and spelling are very distracting but certainly not anything stopping understanding, merely adding distraction. Hopefully correcting this and integrating the changes into the package can still happen and isn't too much trouble.