This Introductory Course should be a mandatory part of the Canadian Curriculum. While I personally found some units dry, yet undoubtedly important, ie. Units on Treaties, other units were extremely interesting. Of course, this depends on where your interests lay. If you enjoy politics and history, these units will be stimulating for you.

Many emotions are evoked throughout the course as there is learning on residential schools and the mistreatment of Indigenous women. Personally, I struggle with reconciliation, as I am not sure how Indigenous Folks will forgive and move on from the atrocities they have suffered at the hands of the "settlers".

I thoroughly enjoyed units on Storytelling and Unit 12 about Indigenous Art. I love everything about Indigenous Art: each individual piece presents a visual of an entire storybook on a single page, with a multitude of intertwined messages. It's bright and colourful and the artist, whom we get the pleasure of listening to at the end of each unit, is gentle, passionate, expressive and creative. The anticipation of the artist's commentary at the end of each module was like a treat for me, dessert.

The three presenters are flawless. Neither of them bobbled a single word! I wonder how many "takes" it took to perfect each presentation. Fabulous work! I enjoyed the numerous interviews, the real-life photos shared throughout and the subtle music (drumming & humming) at the introduction and conclusion of each module. In fact, I would have loved an addition of one more unit on Indigenous music and celebration, inclusive of ceremonial dress. Indigenous craft was touched upon; I would have enjoyed further elaboration. I am so glad I opted to enrol in this course; it has already opened dialogue for me with my brother (who asked me to send him the link!) my eldest son of three, my partner (who is a Status Indian), and at least three of my dear friends, all of whom have close connections to Indigenous people. Thank-you for building on my limited knowledge on First Nations Peoples.

it is very good introductory program providing an overview of the history of the colonization of First Nations people. I'm interested if there are additional courses that includes other Nations and the impact and their history. I was saddened to find that some of the politicians from the 60's and on have continued in a variety of way to decimate First Nations with legislation that would take continue land, rights and "life" away from First Nations. I am so thrilled to see and witness the trajectory of First Nations getting their education that allows them to FIGHT and WIN within the Canadian Judicial and Gov't. It was something I said along time ago. The course could used additional vetting of information and how it flows..but it works .as an introduction. I especially enjoyed the Professors and speakers.. I remembered those the best. I do wish you could have shown some examples of the ART of the artists you highlighted... Also how, where, who have been able to retieve some of the art back to First Nations. Many thanks, I have soooo much to learn and look forward to additional opportunities to do so.

I will share that I always wondered how the German people who survived under the Nazi regime owned and dealt with the shame of what their gov't did to millions of Jews... I assume Shame guilt disbelief...I now have similar feelings... I can't believe so much happened in my lifetime. My deepest apologies !!! Whatever I can do, I will.. to enlighten my peers of what we've done and now witnessed to draw a blind eye to and need to acknowledge, take responsibility and hope to gawd, I don't keep doing it!

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Thank you for this brilliant opportunity for an authentic and professionally presented education of our country's untold history and my personal untold ancestry. I have known for some time that I come from Metis lineage but had no teaching or reliable source of information of what that actually meant. The information presented in this course resonated on so many levels. It was truly a learning and healing exercise.

The course content was deep, concise and presented in a consistent relatable manner. Not having a formal post secondary education I was concerned that the content would be too academic to follow but that was not the case. Some of the material did stray that way but after a couple of reviews it became clear.

I appreciated the artistic depictions of the lesson at the end of each module...very, very effective and beautifully done. It was like an instant hit of community coming together to tell the story. I imagine this would be similar to the effect of how ancestral stories were passed on. It felt good to experience that first hand.

The Canadian education system would be wise to incorporate this, or portions therein, of this content in existing school programs. Or at the very least inform students of it's existence and let them decide if they want to explore it further. I believe many non-indigenous students would be interested to understand the accurate history of Canada...and by extension similar indigenous stories worldwide.

Again, thank you to everyone involved for making this course available.

My evaluation does not fully show how I feel about the content of this course as I feel the content was excellent. As as European, French Canadian living in Nelson, BC, and raised in the southern Alberta plains near Medicine Hat, I grew up in a system of racism towards my fellow Aboriginal citizens. As a young child and teenager, I played sports with my Aboriginal classmates and liked them very much and I was horrified one day in class when our control freak, white principal, strapped an Aboriginal student in our class and I was horrified. I remember crying all of the way home and knew that what I had witnessed was wrong but none of us had the courage to speak up against it. That picture of Wendell, who was such a kind and fun person in class has haunted me to this day. As an interculturalization specialist, I realized a while back that I needed to learn the true histories of our First Nations communities and people and then work to be a supporter and ally. This course was excellent. My issue is with the single, archaic assessment strategy as it seems it would have been so much more meaningful to have people write their reactions to situations of abuse and injustice to really internalize how they will accept this no further as white privilege and go beyond a social media post to show support. All in all - a very good course. I shall share it far and wide. Thank you presenters - you did an excellent job in waking me up to the truthful history that I and all Canadian need to know.

This was a really well put together course, easy to follow, and was most importantly: current, relevant, and informative. Where this course loses points for me is that some of the videos are just not engaging. The content is heavy at times, and while I know it can't always be made 'exciting' there are ways to use technology in the service of pedagogy. Some of the visuals were great, and I could see that the designers were really trying, but it could be better. There are some really great examples of engaging educational video content (Youtube: Kurtzgesagt, CrashCourse Series) that course designers can take some inspiration from. I am not saying a direct copy is needed, but there are elements that can easily be replicated to increase the engagement factor. Often times it was just the host speaking, without any visuals / screen text. If creating a learning experience with videos, its important to keep the person visually engaged. Otherwise the learner can just listen, and has no reason to view the videos. I thouroughly enjoyed this course, and it was a good learning experience for me. This course definitely filled in the blanks for me that my Canadian primary/secondary schooling left, and I feel a responsibility to honor and recognize this land on which I have been allowed to create a life for myself. I highly recommend this course to others, as I think this is an important base knowledge to have for any Canadian. Great work!

I really enjoyed the course. Having the transcripts along with the videos is great to help with review. The course notes are what I used extensively to write blogs about each module (I'm up to Week 6 on that - I will continue with writing a blog for each module every few days until I write a blog for each of the 12) .

I feel that someone does need some knowledge about the Indigenous issues in Canada to properly grasp what is presented in this course. There is a lot of information and (obviously) the course cannot go too deep. Some of the information was completely unknown to me (ie: the layering of rules around what the Indigenous peoples can do with the resources when they became too successful). And the module on treaties was difficult to understand because of the legalize.

I really enjoyed the information about the "modernization" of Indigenous peoples (ie: art, activism, success within urban settings). I think people are too stuck in viewing Indigenous peoples in their traditional roles and don't acknowledge how Indigenous peoples are just as adaptable as anyone else in changing times. Just like any other culture, values don't change, but day-to-day life does. I can't wait to see what an incredible country we can have when we are all arm-in-arm, linked together, walking towards the future together.

Thanks for the final recommendation to pursue some of the artists mentioned. I intend to do just that!

I am very grateful for this course. I gained knowledge that I didn't have before but more importantly I have greater understanding of Indigeneity. Learning about Indigenous worldviews was very helpful. I specifically connected with the loss of identity, culture, histories, traditions and kinship ties as a result of the heteropatriarchal policies of colonialism and the intergenerational trauma caused by the Residential School system. Completing this course was an emotional experience for me but it will not be the end of my learning. It is my fervent hope that more Canadians and people around the globe learn about and learn to appreciate the first peoples of their countries. I believe that every school in Canada should have age appropriate primers on Indigenous peoples of Canada that will help us achieve reconciliation. Since I was a teenager I have believed in my core that the future belongs to the Indigenous peoples of Canada.

I have no issue at all with the content of the course. However, from a production editorial perspective, I found the sound of a toilet flushing or water draining in a pipe in the background in some of the videos distracting and unfortunate. Also, the course notes would benefit from some more editing. I found the odd sentence was incomplete or didn't make sense as if a partial phrase or sentence was copied from somewhere else and accidentally pasted in an entirely different spot.

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.