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The Native American and Indigenous Studies Program (NAIS) (formerly American Indian and Native Studies, AINS) in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is an interdisciplinary program that offers opportunities for all interested students to learn more about key Native American historical experiences and contemporary issues, within North America as well as other regions of the western hemisphere. Our courses and events help students to examine the diversity within indigenous literatures, material culture, belief systems, languages, political and social organization, and economies. Students also learn to critically examine popular stereotypes of Native peoples, and develop a clearer understanding of the complex connections between past and present that shape the achievements, needs, and resources of Native American communities.
The Native American and Indigenous Studies Program acknowledges the university’s origins in land grants from the Ioway, Sioux and Pottowottami, Ho-Chunk, Meskwaki and Sauk peoples; we acknowledge that, like almost all property in the United States, university land has been obtained or extracted from indigenous people. While recognizing that these origins cannot change the past, the Program works to create a future where the past is thoroughly understood in support of human flourishing, democratic values, ethical action and social justice.
The University of Iowa Acknowledgement of Land and Sovereignty represents an official and public recognition that the institutions where we work and learn today are built on Native lands.