The Weaver-Tremblay Award
The Weaver-Tremblay Award in Canadian Applied Anthropology is named after two of Canada's most-renowned applied anthropologists, the late Sally Weaver, and Marc-Adélard Tremblay. In 1992 the Society for Applied Anthropology in Canada established the Weaver-Tremblay Award, naming it after Marc-Adélard Tremblay and Sally Weaver. The award is now adminstered by CASCA.
Marc-Adélard Tremblay is one of Canada's most distinguished teachers and researchers in the social sciences. Founder of the anthropology department at Laval University, a champion of team research employing innovative interdisciplinary research methodologies, his work has focused on understanding the complexities of community response to rapidly changing social conditions. Some of the particular communities with whom he has worked include Nova Scotian Acadians, the Navajo in the American Southwest, and the francophone communities of Quebec's Lower North Shore and in Alberta. The work for which he is most widely known in English Canada is the Hawthorn-Tremblay Report. From 1964 and 1968, he was associate director of this federal survey of Canadian Native People. Tremblay continues to be a productive academic and engaging colleague at the age of 82.
Sally Weaver’s second book, The Making of Canadian Indian Policy published in 1981 has been called one of the most important books in English-language the Social Sciences of the 20th century. Her critique was instrumental in dismantling the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs as it existed in the 1970s, and for the launching of a system of land claims for Aboriginal people in Canada. While a far from perfect system, the latter is a significant improvement of the blatantly discriminatory policies of earlier eras. She taught at the University of Waterloo starting in 1966, chairing the department for several years. She died of cancer in 1993 at the age of 52.
Both Weaver and Tremblay were instrumental in the founding of CASCA, an initiative prompted by a range of factors. But a central principle was their belief that professional associations need, where appropriate, to take public positions on matters of social and political concern, particularly in cases which impact directly on those who have been the traditional subject of anthropological study.
The award was moved to CASCA's jurisdiction, and the association has had the honour over the years to present it to such distinguished colleagues Michael Ames (1994), Paul Charest (1995), Peter Stephenson (1997), Michael Robinson (1998), Michael Asch (2001), Pierre Beaucage (2002), Donat Savoie (2003), Elvi Whittaker (2004), Herman Konrad (2005, posthumously), Richard Preston (2006), Penny Van Esterik (2007), Harvey Feit (2008) and James Waldram (2009).