North America Area Studies - Spring 2025

The Geography of North America
Understand the importance of applying geographic perspective to "real-world" problems and issues.
Summarize the impacts of colonialism on the current politics, cultures, and cultural landscapes of North America.
Define basic concepts and themes in geography such as scale, region, globalization, and human-environment interaction.

North America is the third-largest continent in the world.
The two biggest countries on this continent have control over a huge portion of the Earth’s surface, making them powerful in world affairs.
Greenland is going through big changes because of global climate change.
The US-Mexico borderland is a great example of how geography impacts politics, economics, and daily life.

Many places in the Americas have been home to different Native (Indigenous) groups.
Many Indigenous people no longer live on lands to which they have ancestral ties but sustain their sense of belonging to ancestral homeland.

European powers such as Britain, France, Spain, and Denmark colonized different parts of the continent and brought peoples to settle there.
The two nation-states, the United States and Canada, emerged from its colonial past.

Colonialism has greatly impacted the current politics, cultures, and cultural landscapes of Canada, the United States, and Greenland.
The United States was mainly influenced by Britain.
The United States gained independence after fighting a six-year war with Britain.
Parts of the southwestern US (and Mexico) were influenced by Spanish colonization.
Greenland was colonized by Denmark.
Greenland achieved partial independence from Denmark in 1979, but Denmark still controls its defense and foreign policy.
Canada was shaped by both British and French colonial rule.
Canada remained loyal to Britain for a longer term and peacefully became the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
Colonialism: The control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people.

Canada:
- Population historically dominated by Anglophone (English-speaking) groups and Francophone (French-speaking) groups.
- Diverse First Nations, Aleut, and Inuit peoples.
- New immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world.
The United States:
- Population historically made up of settlers from Western Europe and their descendants.
- Native Americans and enslaved people from Africa.
- Immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Millions of people from Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world have come to the US since the 1960s.
- In both countries, diversity has been strengthened by social movements. In the United States, the Civil Rights Movement played a major role in gaining greater acceptance for African Americans.

Canada is divided into 10 provinces and 4 territories.
The United States is divided into 50 states, including 48 contiguous states and two non-contiguous states: Alaska and Hawai'i.
The United States also has territories: American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands.

Canada is a vast country, stretching 5,500 kilometers from Newfoundland in the east to Vancouver Island on the Pacific Coast.
The country controls about 25% of the world's fresh water.
Most of the population lives within 250 kilometers of the US border.

Both Canada and the United States have systems that separate power between federal governments and state/provincial governments.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states that powers not granted to the federal government are given to the states or the people. However, in practice, power tends to flow from the federal level to state and local governments.
Provincial governments in Canada are generally more self-sustaining and have more independence in making decisions.

The United States:
- A presidential republic. The executive and legislative branches of government are separate.
- The president is the head of the executive branch.
Canada:
- Closely connected to Great Britain as a Commonwealth country.
- The King of England is officially Canada’s head of state, but he has no real power in Canada.
- Instead, the prime minister is the elected leader of the federal government.

The Commonwealth is made up of 56 countries around the world.
The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of independent countries spread over every continent and ocean. Its over 2.5 billion people, who account for almost one-third of the world's population, are in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Americas, Europe and the Pacific. They are of many faiths, races, languages, and cultures.
The Commonwealth promotes peace and international co-operation, democracy and good governance, respect for human rights and the rule of law, and the improvement of lives through economic and social development.
These values and aspirations are described in the Charter of the Commonwealth. The Charter expresses the commitment of member countries to the development of free and democratic societies and the promotion of peace and prosperity to improve the lives of all Commonwealth people. It also acknowledges the role of civil society in supporting the goals and values of the Commonwealth.

Geography = "writing about the earth."
The study of geography helps us understand:
- Earth's physical systems
- Cultural diversity and how it shapes our societies
- Political economies and their impacts on local and global levels

Formal Regions:
- Areas defined by recognized boundaries and characterized by fairly uniform physical, economic, or cultural traits.
- For example, Quebec in Canada. This region is formally bounded by provincial borders. Also the Corn Belt (an economic region), the Rocky Mountains (a physical region).
Functional Regions:
- Areas defined by the interconnected activities or functions that occur there.
- For example, a metropolitan area like Chicago shares various economic, political, and social functions and connections.
Regions are not fixed concepts. They can change and be organized in many different ways.