Guest Editors: Christine Schreyer and John Wagner, UBC Okanagan.

Translation assistance provided by: Francis Langevin, UBC Okanagan.

The CASCA conference held at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus in May of 2024 was the 50th Anniversary of the Society. The theme of the conference was Sedimented Histories, Vital Trajectories | Histoires sédimentées, Trajectoires vitales allowing CASCA members to reflect on the history of CASCA, but also to encourage contemplation on where the society, but also Canadian Anthropology in general, is headed. For instance, in the call for papers, the Local Organizing Committee (including ourselves) wrote: 

At this critical juncture in time, fifty years of Canadian anthropology, we ask and reflect upon: what is the vital-ness of anthropology, as well as its vitality? How can we ensure that the trajectories of the discipline remain spirited, urgent, and of consequence? In short, vibrant. https://blogs.ubc.ca/casca2024/english/ 

À ce moment critique, cinquante ans d’anthropologie canadienne, nous posons la question suivante et y réfléchissons : quelle est l’essence vitale de l’anthropologie et quelle est sa vitalité ? Comment pouvons-nous nous assurer que les trajectoires de la discipline restent dynamiques, urgentes et importantes ? En bref, vibrantes.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/casca2024/francais/ 

One of the many sessions to highlight the 50th anniversary was the bilingual flash talk plenary session that we organized to highlight a range of perspectives on our society. Our request for submissions to this session is below. 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of CASCA, we encourage submissions for the organized 50th anniversary flash talk series. In this series, we invite individuals who wish to reflect on their favourite CASCA moment over the years. Which conference was your favourite and why? What was a pivotal moment in your career that occurred at CASCA? We encourage submissions to the organized 50th anniversary flash talk series from all CASCA members.

Pour commémorer le 50e anniversaire de la CASCA, nous encourageons les personnes intéressées à participer à la série de causeries organisée à cette occasion. Dans le cadre de cette série, nous invitons les personnes qui le souhaitent à évoquer leur « moment CASCA » préféré au fil des ans. Quelle conférence a été votre préférée et pourquoi? Quel a été le moment clé de votre carrière qui s’est déroulé à la CASCA? Nous encourageons tous les membres de la CASCA à participer à la série de causeries organisée à l’occasion du 50e anniversaire. 

In the end, we had a wonderful range of speakers, representing some of the diversity of CASCA membership, including quite a few past executives of CASCA. The speakers in order of appearance during the conference in Kelowna, BC were: Peter Stephenson (University of Victoria), Sabrina Doyon (Université Laval), James Waldram (University of Saskatchewan), Michelle Daveluy (Université Laval), Allyson Brinston (University of Alberta), Emmanuelle Bouchard-Bastien (Université Laval), and Brian Thom (University of Victoria). Their individual talks are presented in this series, and we sincerely thank them for their participation, but here we highlight some themes that cut across the seven contributions. 

We begin with history. The contributions of Stephenson and Waldram in particular provide us with background of the early days of CASCA, when it was CESCE – the Canadian Ethnology Society. They each describe how the society was created with the intention of breaking free of the marginalization Anthropologists faced within the wider Sociology networks of the day. Stephenson in particular describes the early days of the society, what drew people together, and how there was a focus on bilingualism from the outset, using the naming of Culture (the precursor to Anthropologica) as an exemplar of this dedication to bilingualism. 

In her presentation, Doyon reflects on how CASCA is the pulse of Canadian Anthropology and a teaching tool for anthropologists across the country; a place where students can experience the network of Canadian anthropology in person. On a related note, Waldram’s talk asks us to consider how CASCA can continue to “promote a uniquely Canadian anthropology” which looks from east to west, instead of a focus on north-south relations. For instance, Waldram describes the challenge to maintaining a truly Canadian anthropology and the issues with holding joint Canadian and American conferences, while we “reimagine and strengthen our national tradition”. In contrast, Daveluy’s contribution reflects on the strengths of these conferences and the benefit to Canadian anthropology when we as an anthropologists can gather with colleagues from around the world. 

Relatedly, many of the talks described CASCA conferences as places where we as anthropologists can interact with those we are reading, particularly in the francophone context. Others highlighted that participating in CASCA is one of the only ways that they can learn about the anthropology happening not only in other parts of the country (from east to west to north), but also where they can interact with anthropologists of different backgrounds. This was particularly noted by those participants who had served on the CASCA executive. 

Bilingualism was a focus throughout the talks as well, from discussions of bilingualism as core to the founding of Canadian anthropology’s identity, but also the (in)equality of French in the society, as clearly evidenced in Daveluy’s and Bouchard-Bastien’s contributions. As the current Francophone representative for CASCA, Bouchard-Bastien argues that integration of French-speaking researchers into CASCA, “demeure un des grands défis de la CASCA”. Daveluy, who also addresses this issue, calls attention to the need for inclusion of Indigenous languages in CASCA as well as English and French, if we are truly working to enact reconciliation in our work; a focus on Indigenous rights has been a focus of CASCA from the beginning of its history (as seen in the contributions from Stephenson, Waldram, and Thom). 

Above all, a significant takeaway from all of these reflections of 50 years of our society, is that CASCA is a warm, collegial, tight-knit community. This is evident throughout everyone’s comments, but especially in the stories Thom shares of eight CASCA conferences (between 1998 and 2015), all from different stages of his career. Finally, as the sole graduate student on the panel, Allyson Brinston, in her video presentation, also reflects on the welcoming and supportive environment of CASCA. She shares how her experience as an undergraduate student presenting a poster at CASCA 2022, in Regina, catapulted her into her Master’s degree. Her words of encouragement for CASCA touched the hearts of many during the session, when she said, “so keep what you’re doing, keep it up, keep encouraging students, because it means something to us”, and with that spirit in mind we close this editorial summary. 

Photos captions:

Christine Schreyer in the tulip garden at Parliament Hill following her presentation at CASCA in May 2008 in Ottawa, ON. Christine was the 2007 Salisbury Award Winner that year and presented the results of her doctoral research in 2008. You can read that report here: https://www.cas-sca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Salisbury_Report_2007_Schreyer.pdf.  

John Wagner, 2024, “Rivers and Their People” panel – Kelowna

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Reframing Canadian Anthropology: From the CESCE Rebellion to CASCA.

By Peter H Stephenson, Professor emeritus, University of Victoria.

Hello, Bonjour.

I should begin by positioning myself just a bit, first by acknowledging that I am a grateful guest here on Syilx territory. At home, I reside on ĆUÁN, which means ‘strait down to the sea’. [the colonial name for the place is Salt Spring Island]. I live in the area known as SYOW̱ T (Ganges Harbour on most maps). The island is a traditional territory of many Coastal Salishan-speaking people from the region including Hul’q’umi’num (Cowichan tribes), Tsawwassen, Tsawout, Malahat and Tseycum.

Further to positioning myself: I am an immigrant, having arrived in Canada as a dissident during the war in SE Asia, when I was 22 years old. I had just completed a BA at the University of Arizona. As a war resister I held a deep antipathy to much that was American or smacked of other forms of colonialism—especially those coming from France and England. So, I brought both an activist interest in passive resistance and an anti-authoritarian streak to the Canadian Ethnology Society when I was recruited into it, and onto its early executive. I found that orientation was already present in the nascent CESCE when I joined.

In 1975 Sally Weaver was a young professor at Waterloo and gave seminar at Toronto attended by a few young professors and many graduate students. The ‘ancien regime’ of the department were conspicuously absent. On her way out of St Michaels University College that snowy day, Sal lingered and surreptitiously handed me a mimeographed application to join the CESCE. I was shop-steward for the first union of graduate teaching assistants in Canada at that time, and I copied it and distributed it widely. Within two years, Dick Preston at McMaster, where I had my first appointment, asked me to run as a member-at-large: I had not yet defended my dissertation. I was not alone in being a very young member of the Society. The presidents, Ed Rogers and “Adie” Tremblay were the oldest among us, but the rest were young, and included Marie- Françoise Guédon (who is here at the conference!), Jim Freedman, Joan Ryan, Carmen Lambert, Carole Farber, Adrian Tanner, Jean-Claude Muller, Gilles Bibeau, Dominque Legros, and Andrea LaForet, among others.

Perhaps we knew what we didn’t want more than what we did want. What we explicitly did not want was to be tolerated as a marginalized subgroup attached to Sociology. There, we were to tolerated and some thought of us as simply “Micro-Sociologists”…a term one of them used to describe our work.

Seriously, that was the term employed.

We wished for an anthropology that could be read in far more than the one in four issues of The Canadian Revue of Sociology and Anthropology devoted to British style Social Anthropology. We wanted to incorporate museum work into the fold (a shout out here to Andrea LaForet, Michael Ames and Julia Harrison here), we wanted a fully bilingual organization that published in both French and English. Most of us explicitly wanted engagement with Indigenous people, and that was stated right from the beginning. We wanted a voice. And we wanted a public presence. And, we wanted in all NOW!. (Then).

Many of the young scholars in the CESCE came from Quebec and rather obviously knew they had little voice within the British form of Social Anthropology; they also wanted to deal with the diversity of Quebec itself. Both groups—francophone and anglophone—claimed to a certain extent, an intellectual ancestry that ran through C. Marius Barbeau—best known as a scholar of folkore in Quebec, and of NW Coast peoples in BC. So: Partly through amity, and partly due to shared enmity, we made common cause. This was not without a few bumps but accomplished mostly via great friendships and a common ‘esprit de corps’. This shared spirit is something to which I will return. But, basically, none of us wanted to be construed as a colonial or neo-colonial legacy of Britain, France, or the United States—or its agents.

At the outset, the Social Anthropologists within the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association didn’t want us to use the word Anthropology in the name of our fledgling organization. They were adamant, saying they would contest its creation as a non-profit entity if we tried to register the name, because they basically ‘owned’ the word anthropology and wanted to define precisely what it was. I’m not sure how seriously we should have taken their bluster, but there were also voices that wanted some members of the CSAA to feel at home in our new organization too (and some were). Hence the word ‘ethnology’ came to be used, which was a term that many BSA types particularly reviled. I doubt it was at all necessary to take their threats seriously, but our founders gave ground (a strategic retreat). Eventually, cooler heads prevailed within CSAA as most anthropologists in the country came to belong to the CESCE anyway. And so, the name was changed without protest to CASCA…its formation really ushered into being by the hard work of Harvey Feit, at McMaster.

I will tell a story which I think gives you some idea of the spirit that existed within both the CESCE and CASCA when they were formed which gets at what I hope will be retained and continue to emerge going forward.

The journal Culture was named at an executive meeting in the foothills of the Rockies hosted by Joan Ryan. The new president was Dominque LeGros (Concordia). We wanted a cognate that in both English and French meant pretty much the same thing. Hence: “CULTURE”. We also wanted a word that was expansive. We wanted to create a journal that was bold and decidedly not stuffy. It should feature colourful material culture—photographs, paintings, murals, images of sculptures, cartoons…pretty much anything that would catch the attention of readers and not look like a kinship chart. We wanted a large format, like Current Anthropology, discussion sections, longer reviews of museum exhibitions, films and books. We hoped it would transgress the conventions of scholarly publications, but still be intelligent. (And, as Athropologica, it still does all those things!) So, the first issue was planned, and within a couple of years, it was in print…but it was not a birth without difficulty. We could not find a conventional academic publisher at all interested in our format, so we hired an adventurous Montreal printer instead. We were going to mail it out to our members and free to libraries to see if they would subscribe. Unfortunately, shortly after production, the printer went into bankruptcy. So: all the freshly printed copies were locked up as assets of the business to be picked over by creditors. If we had to buy them all back to prevent others from having them it could be prohibitively expensive—we’d be paying for them twice—and yet they were basically worthless to anyone else. So, there was culture, caught between the proverbial legal rock and a capitalist hard place.

What were we to do?

The president of the society was Jean-Claude Muller (Montreal) and he and I ‘liberated’ the hundreds of copies from a conveniently unlocked building somewhere in Outremont, early one morning. Nobody was around: it was barely light outside (ah, dawn…). We wore dark clothing and toques, just to get into the spirit of it all… Well, we got them out, put them in the trunk, and lumbered off and quickly mailed them out. I am not sure how that was expensed in the treasurer’s report, but it was deeply and creatively buried, of that I am sure.

There is far more to the story, but basically, the ‘esprit de corps’ I am talking about is one where people in an organization should be prepared to take unconventional steps to secure what they want. I don’t mean members of the executive should commit larceny, but, well, as needs be, you know…….

So, how are we to flourish? …and CASCA has in my view, over a long-time span, really flourished. I think to flourish, requires some struggle. Not too much, but some difficulty must be there or complacency will rule the day.

The basic lesson I think is that one must be prepared, as individuals and as a group, to take some risks. Sometimes big risks. One can’t ‘bake in’ resourcefulness or a bit of courage, with policy or with regulations. On the contrary, it must reside in a constituency itself. And that is made easier by including students; by fostering relationships with other groups, especially groups within society at large. A considered advocacy is not just desirable for all of this, it is required. In short, it must be part of our culture…right at the very core of it. It must always be a glimmer, like the early dawn so eloquently described the other day by Bernard Perley in the session that imagined the next fifty years of CASCA. It can be envisioned as something shining, like the Sun stolen by the Raven and gifted to humanity. There must always be a crack, as Leonard Cohen put it, to let the future light in.

~Peter

*****

CASCA, histoires de cheminements et de filiations

Par Sabrina Doyon, Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval

La CASCA rythme la vie de l’anthropologie canadienne. Au-delà de sa position centrale, culminant lors des conférences annuelles, elle balise une série de points focaux qui tissent le paysage académique de notre discipline, ses méandres et ses filiations. De manière bien personnelle, la CASCA est d’abord associée à une double révélation que j’ai eue en 1997 lors de ma première participation à titre d’étudiante au baccalauréat : d’une part l’éveil à tout ce que peut être et ce que peut faire l’anthropologie et, d’autre part, la réalisation du nombre important de mes semblables! Alors qu’à l’université nous étions, et sommes encore, très minoritaire démographiquement dans notre institution comptant 35 000 étudiantes et étudiants, et que cette discipline était encore relativement ésotérique pour mes proches, je me voyais côtoyer des centaines d’anthropologues qui parlaient de leurs recherches, de la manière dont ils s’y étaient pris pour réaliser leurs ethnographies, de leurs analyses, de leurs réussites, de leurs difficultés, développant des questions et des enjeux auxquels je n’avais pas encore eu l’occasion de réfléchir. Ça a été une véritable décharge électrique.

C’est mon mentor, Yvan Breton, aujourd’hui professeur retraité du département d’anthropologie de l’Université Laval, qui m’a alors fait confiance et m’a permis de vivre cette première expérience, bien que je fusse encore très inexpérimentée et en route pour mon premier travail de terrain sur la côte pacifique du Mexique. J’étais, et je suis toujours, profondément reconnaissante de cette confiance, de ses enseignements, de son encadrement et des ressources qu’il a déployés pour que je puisse participer à cet évènement et ensuite faire des recherches dans le cadre de son projet comparatif sur des communautés de pêcheurs artisanaux au Mexique et à Madagascar. Je participais à une session organisée avec deux autres collègues étudiants à la maîtrise qui partaient quant à eux à Madagascar dans le cadre de ce même projet. Par un « beau » dimanche matin pluvieux, nous avons diligemment présenté nos travaux devant une salle presque vide. Toutefois, cela ne m’affectait pas le moins du monde! J’étais galvanisée par mes derniers jours passés au colloque, portée par la diversité des présentations et l’ampleur des recherches, par la conférence plénière de Sherry B. Ortner, les rencontres et les liens tissés avec de futurs collègues, émerveillée de pouvoir échanger informellement avec des auteurs que j’avais lus dans mes cours et qui existaient en chair et en os!

Ce bref retour sur une partie de mon parcours individuel vise non pas à dévoiler ma candeur, mais à souligner trois points saillants du paysage de la recherche et de l’enseignement en anthropologie et que la CASCA contribue à mettre en œuvre. La CASCA permet premièrement de prendre le pouls et de se mettre au diapason de ce qui fait vibrer la discipline au Canada. Elle le favorise par une approche généraliste et à échelle humaine qui est très appréciable et qui donne un supplément d’âme à ces conférences annuelles. Par le fait même, elle permet aussi d’exposer de manière accessible certains des mécanismes qui organisent la vie académique d’une discipline, tels que les parcours des collègues, le monde de la publication scientifique, le recrutement pour les emplois. 

Deuxièmement, la CASCA offre, au-delà des échanges, l’opportunité de collaborer avec des collègues de différents horizons. Cela peut se faire notamment dans le cadre du comité exécutif où j’ai eu l’occasion de siéger en tant que présidente. Ces occasions de travail entre collègues permettent de mener à bien des dossiers importants pour notre discipline. Par exemple, dans le cadre de mon mandat, j’ai pu travailler à consolider un appui financier structurel et récurent pour l’édition de la revue Anthropologica. Ce soutien à l’édition est important pour assurer qu’elle se maintienne à la hauteur d’autres grandes revues canadiennes et disciplinaires. J’ai aussi pu travailler avec mes collègues à bonifier et assurer des budgets structurels pour les traductions des grands évènements de nos conférences annuelles. Par cela, nous pouvons avoir recours à des professionnels plutôt qu’à des plateformes de traduction intelligentes qui n’arrivent pas à rendre le contenu d’idées complexes formulées avec nuances, comme l’a confirmé en mai 2024 le commissaire aux langues officielles du Canada. Il est fondamental que ce travail de traduction soit mené avec sérieux et rigueur afin de respecter le travail de nos collègues et pour prétendre être une organisation bilingue dans ce pays bilingue. Ce ne sont que deux exemples parmi les nombreuses autres avancées que la collaboration entre les collègues a permis de réaliser pour faire avancer et rayonner notre discipline.

Enfin, la CASCA est un formidable outil d’enseignement, tant formel qu’organique, pour nos étudiantes et étudiants, et je suis à même de le constater année après année alors que depuis le début de ma carrière je prends le relais des mêmes mécanismes qui m’ont amené à cette conférence il y a 27 ans. En effet, nous les invitons à s’impliquer dans l’association, à soumettre leurs dossiers pour les bourses de l’association, comme la Salisbury que j’ai aussi eu l’honneur de recevoir, et à proposer des conférences. Pour leur permettre de participer, nous les accompagnons dans le travail d’analyse, d’écriture, de corrections, de relecture et ils apprennent les différents rythmes du temps académique. Nous les appuyons dans l’organisation de sessions ainsi qu’avec une partie de la logistique grâce à des appuis financiers de nos subventions de recherche et de fonds départementaux. Le travail que leur participation à la conférence annuelle les amène à réaliser leur permet d’affiner leurs analyses, et ce rite de passage pour plusieurs devient un moyen supplémentaire pour de réfléchir de manière pratique aux politiques de l’écriture ethnographique et de la diffusion, aux enjeux méthodologiques et à l’éthique à la recherche. La conférence leur permet aussi de développer leur base comparative en pouvant mettre en perspective différentes expériences de terrain et leurs nuances. C’est un plaisir et une fierté de les y voir se développer et devenir de jeunes chercheuses et chercheurs, tout en ayant la possibilité de tisser avec eux de nouveaux liens à la faveur de ces évènements. Par ce processus de transmission auquel j’ai le privilège de pouvoir contribuer, nous maintenons des bases pour que la fascination et l’intérêt pour l’anthropologie se poursuivent, comme le dit Pierre Perreault, “pour la suite du monde”. 

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Existential Threats and Resilience in the History of CASCA

By James B. Waldram, Department of Anthropology, University of Saskatchewan

Reflecting on a career-long engagement with CASCA and its predecessor, CESCE, I offer a few thoughts on its past and current trajectories, its moments of resilience and celebration as a unique anthropological community, and the possible threats to that uniqueness posed by an increasingly aggressive international anthropological presence. My views here are shaped primarily by familiarity with anglophone Canadian anthropology; the vibrant francophone anthropological history deserves its own treatment.

Since its inception, our association has been challenged to grow and maintain both its membership base and scholarly interest in its activities. Sally Weaver – for whom the Weaver-Tremblay award is partly named – was, I believe, the first Canadian PhD in anthropology, at Toronto, and fittingly became the first President of the CESCE. That association’s formation was in response to the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association’s claim to represent anthropology in Canada, despite little actual participation by anthropologists. This was perhaps the first existential threat we faced! 

In the early days there was heavy emphasis in developing and promoting a uniquely Canadian anthropology, in contradistinction to the AAA. While I was not there at the very start, I did join during its first generation as I entered graduate school. The “Candianness” of the association was palpable. Yet there were few Canadian PhD programs at the time. As the Canadian university system expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, and with few Canadian PhDs available, recruitment of international scholars sparked our emergence as a discipline and society. Some of the most influential “Canadian” anthropologists were, in fact, born and/or and trained elsewhere: Peter Stephenson, Richard Salisbury, Regna Darnell, and Skip Koolage, and so on. They engaged with the idea of Canada and turned their scholarly lens in that direction, and in so doing helped create the first generation of anthropologists trained in Canada who, in turn, engaged with Canadian issues and problems and added a Canadian perspective to global anthropology.

In more recent years, the relative coziness of our association fostered by a fairly singular purpose has given way to a dynamic, expanding entity whose members engage more globally and much less with the idea of Canadian anthropology. This, in itself, is not an existential threat to CASCA. But this transition has brought with it important challenges:

• A disinclination to attend conferences outside of the Big Three (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver). CASCA’s philosophy has always been to ensure all regions participate, and some of the most rewarding conferences have been in the smaller centres. Too many of our colleagues would rather attend conferences in the United States than go to the east coast or the prairies.
• “Joint” conferences with the AAA in Canada that renders CASCA largely invisible. The AAA juggernaut, with 7000 attendees, simply overwhelms. These joint conferences have a nastiness to them that we do not see at CASCA conferences. There is hyper-competitiveness, personal attacks, and aggressive criticism. An observation heard repeatedly at the 50th anniversary session of CASCA in Kelowna this year was that our society is welcoming, and attendees, especially students and junior scholars, find the experience wonderfully collegial and supportive. 
• The dominance of international content in CASCA social media. Rarely do we receive announcements related to anthropology in Canada. Quite possibly this is because few anthropologists or departments bother to submit items. This apathy is a symptom of the current zeitgeist. But it is frustrating to see Canadian content then emanating from AAA social media and not CASCA. 
• CASCA posts videos of anthropologists primarily in Ontario and Quebec, as if anthropology elsewhere does not exist or does not matter. Further, videos often include non-anthropologists, or anthropologists in other countries (especially from Europe). We cannot be a national society if we focus only on one part of the country.
• Lack of interest in serving CASCA by those most able to do so, full-time faculty. Yet we see our colleagues running in elections for offices in AAA societies. While graduate students admirably pick up the task, it is not healthy for a national scholarly association to place students in these roles, nor does it send a positive signal of the merits of executive service.
• The devaluing of Canadian PhD degrees in hiring processes. Most permanent positions do not go to Canadian trained anthropologists anymore. If your degree is Ivy League, Chicago, or has “California” in it then you are hired!  Yet we have many PhD programs and hundreds of graduate students. We find many of them in precarious positions or they leave academia altogether. 

In 2004, I represented CASCA in Recife, Brazil, at the formation of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA). One strong message emanating from that meeting was the importance of maintaining strong national anthropology associations, to ensure that our discipline remains diverse and globally relevant. I fear CASCA has lost sight of this, and instead has become little more than an informal section of the AAA. Canadian anthropologists no longer orient east-west; their scholarly gaze is north-south. 

In this our 50th year, I ask, will we reimagine and strengthen our national tradition? CASCA has proven resilient over the years, hanging in, managing significant ebbs and flows in membership and interest in our conference (which has always been the cornerstone of CASCA). But this feels different to me. I am not sure we have much bounce back left. What I am sure of is that the future of our society lies with those many scholars currently holding permanent positions in Canadian universities, no matter where they are from and where they trained. How they choose to engage with the idea of “Canadian” anthropology will determine our future.

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Bénévolat, réseautage et collaboration à la CASCA – From networking among anthropologists to working as an anthropologist

Par Michelle Daveluy, Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval

J’étais étudiante quand j’ai entendu parler de la CASCA pour la première fois. Le colloque annuel de l’association avait lieu à l’Université de Montréal et le comité organisateur était à la recherche de bénévoles. En échange de notre temps à l’accueil pour donner des directions aux anthropologues égaré.e.s sur le campus, nos frais d’inscription au colloque et à la CASCA étaient levés. C’était une bonne stratégie pour augmenter le nombre de membres de la CASCA, un facteur de financement des associations académiques au Canada. Renouveler les adhésions à la CASCA parmi les étudiant.e.s  permet aussi d’abaisser la moyenne d’âge des anthropologues qui s’y retrouvent. Bref, pour économiser des frais, les étudiant.e.s étaient prêt.e.s à donner du temps. Sans compter que nous étions fidélisé.e.s à l’association grâce aux numéros de la revue Culture, devenue Anthropologica, qui venait avec l’adhésion à la CASCA. 

Ma directrice de recherche, Pierrette Thibault, nous avait prévenu.e.s que l’organisateur du colloque, Richard Lee, allait probablement venir saluer chacun chacune d’entre nous. Elle nous avait préparé.e.s à mettre un visage sur une lecture obligatoire dans les cours d’introduction du baccalauréat. To students studying Anthropology in French, Anglo Canadian anthropologists are but a mandatory reading until we meet them in scholarly meetings. Cela a peut-être un peu changé à l’ère des réseaux sociaux mais serrer la pince aux anthropologues connu.e.s, lu.e.s et étudié.e.s demeure mémorable.

J’ai dès lors pris l’habitude de participer aux colloques annuels de la CASCA. C’est aux activités du Réseau des femmes de la CASCA que j’ai entendu parler d’un poste qui s’ouvrait dans mon domaine de spécialisation. C’était le premier au Canada depuis le début de mes études doctorales. J’ai obtenu ce poste et ai travaillé avec la personne venue recruter à la CASCA pendant 7 ans. Quand elle m’a téléphoné pour m’offrir le poste, je savais exactement à qui je parlais. C’était le matin de ma soutenance de thèse. Susan Walter et les collègues à Saint Mary’s à Halifax auront été de fantastiques mentors. Bien établi.e.s dans leur carrière, iels accueillaient le sang neuf avec beaucoup d’intérêt et de bienveillance. 

Puis, la CASCA m’a recrutée à titre d’éditrice du Bulletin, un rôle que j’ai joué de 1995 à 1998. Professeure adjointe bilingue, je correspondais au profil de membres dont la CASCA a besoin pour publier en français et en anglais. J’étais éligible à la permanence mais pour l’obtenir mon dossier devait être conséquent, comme tout le monde, en enseignement, en recherche et en publication. Mon travail pour la CASCA était considéré à titre de service à la communauté. Cependant, il était attendu que je m’implique aussi au sein des communautés locales de la Nouvelle-Écosse. C’était excitant de faire tout cela à la fois, mais ô combien exigeant. Aux anthropologues qui jonglent avec trop de responsabilités pour une seule personne, je vous souhaite l’endurance nécessaire pour persister. 

Éventuellement, on a pensé à moi pour la présidence de la CASCA (2001-2004). La première résolution votée par l’exécutif à mon début de mandat concernait le colloque conjoint de la CASCA à Mérida dans la péninsule du Yucatan au Mexique. Même si plusieurs hésitaient à se réunir ailleurs qu’au Canada, ce colloque a été un franc succès pour la CASCA. 

En 2023, j’ai co-présidé le colloque conjoint du AAA et de la CASCA à Toronto avec Sarah Shulist et Sameena Mulla. De nos jours, les enjeux sont différents mais je demeure persuadée que l’anthropologie canadienne bénéficie d’activités réunissant des collègues de partout dans le monde. En 2023, des anthropologues de 62 pays ont participé au colloque. Ce n’est pas rien. Il faut jouer un peu du coude pour faire notre place sur ces tribunes mais le jeu en vaut la chandelle.

La CASCA a été et demeure pour moi un forum pour comprendre l’anthropologie hors Québec, l’anthropologie canadienne et l’anthropologie à l’américaine. En tant que sociolinguistique variationniste labovienne de formation, mon réseau initial de diffusion des résultats de mes travaux était principalement américain dans le cadre des colloques annuels NWAVE (New Ways of Analysing Variation in English). Il s’agit là d’un réseau hyperspécialisé que la participation aux activités de l’ACFAS (l’Association canadienne-française pour l’avancement des sciences) complétait bien. À la CASCA, j’ai trouvé une plateforme disciplinaire et souvent anti-américaine. Y participer compensait donc mon parcours sous influence des grandes écoles américaines. Provincialisme et hégémonisme ont fini par s’équilibrer.

Cela étant dit, il m’a souvent fallu prendre mes distances de la CASCA. L’anthropologie qu’on y retrouve, parfois militante, mais pas toujours, ne sait trop que faire de l’anthropologie langagière qui m’intéresse. Combien de fois des collègues ont-iels décrit mes recherches comme de la linguistique et non pas de l’anthropologie socio-culturelle. En effet, l’anthropologie de la CASCA est assez spécifique. Combien de discussions ai-je eues avec des collègues persuadé.e.s que le socio-culturel englobe tout le reste. On finit par aller voir ailleurs, se ressourcer où nos contributions sont comprises pour ce qu’elles sont, là où l’anthropologie langagière est reconnue à part entière, comme au AAA. On fait donc des allers retours d’une association à l’autre mais il n’est pas toujours possible ni souhaitable de multiplier les conférences auxquelles on assiste.

Par ailleurs, la langue dans laquelle je pratique l’anthropologie, le français, est rarement utilisée à la CASCA, sauf lors des cycles de demandes de subvention. À ma connaissance, la CASCA est encore la seule association d’anthropologie bilingue au Canada. Pourtant, on entend très peu de français à la CASCA et on y lit un français boîteux de sorte que plusieurs francophones choisissent de s’y exprimer en anglais. Je remercie Christine Schreyer qui a fait de moi la francophone de service au colloque annuel de Kelowna. Des collègues innues ont participé à la table-ronde que j’ai organisée et qui a eu lieu ce matin en français. Merci à tous ceux et celles qui sont venu.e.s nous entendre. Pour mes collègues innues et pour certain.e.s de mes étudiant.e.s, participer à cette table-ronde est possible parce qu’elle se déroule en français. Si la réconciliation est d’intérêt en anthropologie, j’espère que la CASCA va y contribuer pour toutes les communautés concernées au pays, peu importe la langue qui s’est imposée dans leur cas spécifique. Transiger en anglais c’est parfois une couche supplémentaire d’intransigeance qui nuit au dialogue et aux relations existantes. Pour plusieurs des personnes avec qui je collabore la langue de travail est le français. S’il faut faire de la place à une autre langue dans la diffusion de nos travaux, c’est l’inum-aimun, l’inuktitut, l’anishnabemowin qui devrait prévaloir.

Il n’en reste pas moins que j’ai trouvé et trouve encore mon compte à la CASCA puisque j’y suis encore. C’est un cadre qui m’a permis de demeurer anthropologue au Québec et au Canada, ce qui m’importait beaucoup pour le type de recherche que je souhaitais faire. À l’époque, peu de linguistes ou de sociolinguistiques s’intéressaient aux dynamiques langagières à bord des navires de la Marine canadienne, une institution qui ressemble somme toute beaucoup à la CASCA puisque les Forces armées canadiennes ont besoin de recruter autant chez les francophones que chez les anglophones pour assurer la bonne marche de ses activités. En tant qu’anthropologue, partir en mer allait de soi. Dès lors, ma cote s’est améliorée auprès des sociolinguistes comme des anthropologues bien que trainer avec des militaires ne soit pas particulièrement bien vu à la CASCA. Bref, même si on m’y a souvent fait sentir pas tout à fait légitime bien qu’utile à plusieurs égards, j’ai aussi appris à la CASCA une forme de réseautage d’est en ouest, en dehors des grands centres (comme Montréal ou Toronto). Grâce à la CASCA, j’ai connu des endroits où l’anthropologie canadienne se pratique depuis longtemps. Les Franco-mobiles auxquels je me suis intéressée dans le cadre de l’industrie pétrolière connaissent très bien ce Canada-là. 

Je suis tout de même préoccupée par la régionalisation de l’anthropologie à la CASCA. On y pratique actuellement une anthropologie de l’ouest, du nord ou de l’est. Il y a cinquante ans, la fondation de la CASCA a pourtant été l’œuvre de collègues de partout au Canada. Iels souhaitaient se réunir pour développer une pratique anthropologique autonome dans les universités canadiennes. De nos jours, il existe bel et bien une anthropologie pan-canadienne mais elle repose sur le cumul de ses parties, parfois sinon souvent dans l’ignorance mutuelle de ses constituants. 

On verra ce que l’avenir lui réserve. La CASCA a sans aucun doute un rôle à jouer dans la suite des choses. Merci à tous ceux et toutes celles qui en assurent la continuité, y apportent des points de vue variés et font en sorte que des préoccupations toujours renouvelées y sont débattues. 

Photo caption:

Participant in our round table at the 2024 conference of CASCA, the Department of Anthropology of Laval University and Innu Takuaikan Uashat mak Mani-Utenam. From left to right: Honorine Guichard (Université Laval), Laurence Alain (UL), Ntshukus Volant (Coordonatracie innu-aimun, Secteur Éducation, ITUM) Heidie Vachon (Directrice adjointe de la recherche et du développement innu-aitun et innu-aimun, ITUM), Vicky Langlois (UL), Michelle Daveluy (UL), Rosanne Grégoire (Conseillère élue, porteuse du dossier éducation, ITUM)

*****

Posters, Peers, and Praise: Navigating My First CASCA Experience

By Allyson Brinston, University of Alberta

Allyson Brinston’s Video Link YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgdRnSSvoSM

*****
Qu’est-ce que la CASCA représente pour une jeune chercheuse d’établissement francophone?

Par Emmanuelle Bouchard-Bastien, Département d’anthropologie, Université Laval

Avant de vous présenter mes quelques points de réflexions, j’aimerais également vous partager une anecdote associée à ma première conférence de la CASCA. C’était celle organisée à Ottawa, en mai 2017, co-organisée avec l’International Union of Anthropological and ethnological sciences (IUAES). J’étais à ce moment au début de mes études doctorales, donc une période où je lisais intensément des articles scientifiques en lien avec mon sujet de recherche. Dans le cadre de cette conférence, j’ai eu la chance de participer à un panel avec des auteurs et des autrices de certains de ces articles que je considérais comme phare. Ce moment représente pour moi un point de basculement, où les humains derrière les articles scientifiques sont devenus tangibles, accessibles, et avec lesquels le dialogue était possible. C’est donc à ce moment, grâce à ce congrès, à ces échanges, que j’ai pris conscience que je ne serai pas qu’une spectatrice en marge de la production scientifique comme je l’avais été jusqu’à ce moment, mais que j’allais maintenant en devenir une actrice. Je dirais que c’est vraiment à ce moment que j’ai commencé à assumer que j’allais moi aussi devenir une chercheuse.

Sinon, aujourd’hui, j’aimerais profiter de cette tribune pour mettre en lumière trois enjeux qui colorent ma pratique et dans lesquelles la CASCA a potentiellement un rôle à jouer. Le premier point est l’enjeu de l’appartenance, qu’est-ce qu’un anthropologue? Comme vous l’avez peut-être compris dans ma bio, je pratique mon métier de chercheuse dans un cadre institutionnel et non pas dans un cadre universitaire. Je travaille à l’Institut national de santé publique du Québec, qui est un centre d’expertise en santé publique. Plus particulièrement, je travaille en santé environnementale, donc mes collègues sont principalement, des médecins, des épidémiologistes, des toxicologues, des biologiques ou des aménagistes. Ces une position qui n’est pas toujours confortable, car je dois souvent expliquer ce que je fais en temps qu’anthropologues dans ce milieu, ce que je peux faire aussi. Vous n’êtes certainement pas sans savoir que plusieurs individus qui ont suivi un cursus académique en sciences appliquées ne captent pas la plus-value du travail ethnographique ou pensent que réaliser des entrevues semi- dirigées et des analyses qualitatives ne demande aucune formation particulière. Bien vrai qu’avec les années, cette position devient de plus en plus confortable pour moi, car mes travaux deviennent mes cartes de visite. Et je dois dire que je remarque une prise de conscience grandissante de l’importance des dimensions sociales dans l’analyse des questions environnementales, mais il y aura toujours de nouveaux collègues qui n’auront aucune expertise en sciences humaines et sociales, et qui vont penser que j’ai choisi l’anthropologie comme discipline académique, car je n’étais pas douée en mathématiques! Ce travail constant me demande d’avoir dans mon milieu de travail une identité très forte, ce qui est un travail en soi. Ainsi, pouvoir me retrouver comme aujourd’hui dans un congrès de la CASCA, entouré d’anthropologues, de prendre connaissances de tous vos travaux, permet de nourrir mon identité, de me rappeler que je ne suis pas seule. Et cela permet de me donner des forces pour poursuivre mon travail, qui contribue à faire briller l’anthropologie auprès d’autres disciplines.

Le deuxième enjeu que j’aimerais partager avec vous aujourd’hui a émergé en moi plus récemment, et c’est en lien avec qu’est-ce qu’un anthropologue canadien ? Et je pose cette question d’un point de vue d’une jeune chercheuse francophone. Comme vous le savez certainement, j’ai le privilège d’être la membre active francophone de la CASCA depuis la dernière année, et cette position m’a permis de plonger et de naviguer dans la réalité bilingue de la CASCA. Personnellement, je ne suis pas parfaitement bilingue, mais je suis capable de me baser sur des recherches anglophones pour construire de la science. Or, je réalise depuis les derniers mois que j’ai des collègues canadiens unilingues anglophones, pour lesquels mes contributions scientifiques sont invisibles. J’ai en effet réalisé que pratiquement l’entièreté de mon travail est en français, donc l’ensemble de mes rapports, de mes articles, de mes communications sont en français. Idem pour ma thèse de doctorat, dont je suis si fière ; tous les produits dérivés sont en français, à l’exception de la conférence que j’ai prononcée en anglais mercredi dernier. De ce fait, mes travaux se positionnent pour être davantage reconnus et mobilisés en Europe, et ailleurs dans la francophonie, que dans le reste du Canada, alors que mes terrains de recherche sont canadiens. Je crois sincèrement que la CASCA peut contribuer à rapprocher et créer des liens entre les anglophones et les francophones, comme dans le cadre de ce panel aujourd’hui qui en est un excellent exemple. Je suis dans mon pays et je peux m’exprimer dans ma langue maternelle, et vous me comprenez, enfin, si le traducteur fait du bon travail (rire !). Mais je crois que cette situation, qui est d’intégrer les chercheurs francophones, demeure un des grands défis de la CASCA.

J’aimerais rapidement terminer avec mon troisième point qui porte sur la mémoire de l’organisation et des accomplissements de ses membres. Pour une jeune chercheuse comme moi, connaître le cheminement de mes prédécesseurs, que ce soit les aspects méthodologiques, conceptuels ou pratiques, est fondamental. Pour que cette mémoire demeure vivante, chacun et chacune d’entre nous doivent en prendre soin et doivent la nourrir. Les congrès annuels permettent très certainement de contribuer à cet effort, car ils réunissent sous un même toit les piliers de la discipline et les nouveaux étudiants. Des outils comme le bulletin Culture, la revue Anthropologica et les différents médias sociaux de la CASCA peuvent également être mobilisés par nous tous et toutes. Sans compter les nombreux prix offerts par la CASCA, qui deviennent des vitrines de choix pour mettre en lumière des carrières, des ouvrages et des recherches exceptionnels. En ce sens, je ne peux que souhaiter longue vie à cette organisation, qui depuis le commencement de mes études doctorales en 2016 et jusqu’à aujourd’hui, demeure à la fois un tremplin et un port d’attache.

*****

Key Career Moments with CASCA: Becoming an Anthropologist

By Brian Thom, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria

Thank you, Christine and John for inviting me to present in this anniversary plenary panel, and to the interpreters for offering a French version of the stories I have to share. My name is Brian Thom and I’m associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. I have been coming to CASCA meetings since 1994 — 30 years ago — when I presented a paper as an M.A student (1).

I’ve been to 15 meetings since: three as a PhD student, four as a practicing anthropologist and seven as a university professor. I presented a paper at all of these meetings, usually on themes related to Indigenous land rights, human rights, and political struggles, and the ways anthropology could contribute to Indigenous people’s visions for the future. I’ve been in at least three panels for practicing anthropology and another on community engaged learning. These meetings are a great springboard for my work. Nine of the 15 papers that I presented have been published in some way, and two more are in the works. But more importantly, I think, has been the sense of community and mutual support that I have experienced at CASCA. I have a few stories along these lines to share with you all today.

CASCA 1998 Toronto
I was going through my old files and in the folder for the CASCA 1998 meetings in Toronto, I found these little pages notes that I took right after my session. They say “Julie Cruikshank came to talk to me after my paper today. She wanted to tell me about the story of the woman who married the bear”. The notes go on to talk about how Julie had some thoughts about my paper, and was basically just very encouraging. Julie was an icon and a hero and I was so honored to be noticed and engaged by a senior scholar. This was a first glimpse into the nice, collegial world of CASCA meetings (2).

CASCA 1999 Laval
My next story is from the 1999 CASCA meetings at Laval. I always remember this as one of the greatest CASCA meetings, there were many sessions on topics I cared about (3), but it was more the intimate and friendly atmosphere that moved me. I distinctly remember how my new francophone peers had invited me out for dinner with them one night. We all sat at a big table in a restaurant on a warm sunny patio, talking and laughing, students and profs all together. I chanced to sit beside Sylvie Poirier, who was dazzlingly brilliant. Again, I felt welcome, and that I was with my people. This was a stark contrast with my experience as a student at AAA meetings where you were always just an anonymous Backwater person, lost in a sea that you can’t effectively navigate.

CASCA 2001 Montreal
In 2001, the CASCA meetings were in Montreal, and this was my personal worst CASCA event. I was still doing my doctoral research at the time and I decided to give a talk on a side project from my dissertation. Adding to my folly, I decided that it would be more exciting to just talk from notes instead of reading from a prepared paper. My presentation got unraveled and it was an unmitigated disaster. After 15 minutes of bumbling through I thanked everyone for listening and made my way from the podium. But it was okay. No one said anything critical at the event, where I placated my hard feelings at a CASCA wine and cheese event. That talk probably went forgotten by everyone but me to this day, and finally, in 2020 I published a paper (4) that came out of that initial work. The lesson learned is that CASCA was an OK place, that we could make mistakes that would not ruin careers!

CASCA 2006 Montreal
My next story is from the 2006 CASCA meetings in Montreal (5). I had just finished my PhD the year before and was working for a First Nations organization on Vancouver Island. Carmen Lambert, one of my doctoral committee members, had lunch with me, sharing some candid stories of her experiences of difficulty and hardship as a francophone woman in her academic career. They were eye opening. She was always really supportive of me, and told me that since I was on Vancouver Island I should go meet her old colleague, Peter Stevenson, who was at the University of Victoria.

So, I stalked Peter out, looking at all the name tags by the elevator. When I finally found him, I said, “Peter, I’m one of Carmen Lambert’s students, and she suggested that I should meet you. I’m working on the Island, and would be really interested in teaching at UVic someday.” Peter met up with me for coffee later that day, sharing some stories of CASCA’s history and his own take on how academia had unfairly treated women, and asked interesting questions about my work. Next fall, I got a call from the Department at UVic asking if I would be interested in teaching a night course. That meeting was the real
start of my journey to my current position.

CASCA 2009 Vancouver
The 2009 CASCA meetings were in Vancouver. I remember how Craig Candler we were both there, basically two anthropologists working largely outside academia (6). We went to many of the same sessions in this and previous meetings, and had developed a strong sense that the conversations the academics
were having were often really out of touch with the urgent theoretical and methodological issues that professional anthropologists were facing. We hatched on an idea for a Practicing Anthropology Network through CASCA.

During those meetings We talked to members of the executive at that meeting who were receptive and encouraging, and soon after the network took formal shape within CASCA with Craig serving for many years as its chair.

CASCA 2013 Victoria
This was the first time CASCA was held in my home town of Victoria. Craig Candler and I organized a double header, practicing anthropology roundtable, inviting what we thought were old guard Consulting Anthropologists to share their expertise alongside some of us who were in the younger generation working outside academia, mainly on First Nations rights and title issues. Our session was fabulously well attended, but erupted in raucous disagreement between panel members. There was a serious split, somewhat along a generational divide, on issues of ethics, methods, and what kind of work was valuable or powerful. Our sense after the session is that not only were these fundamental issues of what work was worth doing, but also about how much the work was worth. In a Marketplace of anthropologists, where there are more and more younger people doing excellent work, we had an underlying sense that the expanding cohort of non-academic anthropologists may be threatening some peoples’ financial security. These conversations reverberated among professionals for years after those meetings.

I also remember having agreed to the most difficult conference presentation format ever: the pecha kucha — where the slides rotate automatically through on a timer and your highly practiced talk syncs up with them like a performance artist. It was the first and last pecha kucha talk I ever gave! (7)

CASCA 2010 Montreal
My final anecdotes all have to do with how important these meetings have been to me as a professor growing in my career.

I remember the 2010 CASCA in Montreal, which was held shortly after I got a tenure track job at the University of Victoria (8). I was there along with my new colleagues Lisa Mitchell and Andrea Walsh. We didn’t know each other well at all, and I tagged along with them for dinner in le Plateau. We had fabulous food, had laughs in their funky washroom, and just got to know each other better! As colleagues, we never really did these things at home, there never seemed to be enough times. CASCA meetings provide the rare opportunity to be able to breathe and connect with each other outside of our
ever so busy workspaces.

CASCA 2015 Quebec
The CASCA 2015 in Quebec City was another amazing meeting, which included dancing on a riverboat cruise down the Fleuve St. Laurence (9). I remember seeing Tim Ingold sitting alone at a picnic table having his lunch. Imagine being a person of that celebrity status sitting by himself at a conference having a sandwich! If this was a AAA meeting, he would have been ferried around in the Pope-Mobile! I sat down on that picnic bench with my cafeteria tray and we had a lovely long chat; it was just delightful.

I went to a compelling and memorable panel at those meetings on the importance of plural-lingualism in our programs and practice, and the hazards of anglo-dominance. That conversation was really important to me for thinking about things like the our second language requirements in our PhD programs, and encouraged me to keep engaging with scholars like Benoit Ethier at UQAT and to value publishing my own work in French (10).

But the best part of this meeting was going for a long walk in Old Quebec with Tad McIlwraith. We had both applied for the same job at the University of Victoria, but I was the lucky one who got it. Tad is a remarkably talented anthropologist and educator now a Guelph, and there were no hard feelings. By spending quality time in an unstructured way — walking around town and seeing the sites — we formed a professional bond that I know we could rely on each other for anything today. Again, CASCA is not just about the panels and presentations, it is about the time we spend with a community of colleagues that we have throughout our careers. I feel the same way about many of my colleagues here today. You are all my people.

Conclusions
I am very grateful to have this CASCA Community. We have what I think is a very nice scholarly culture, from the awards we give to the top students in our departments, the Salisbury Award for our excellent doctoral students and the Women’s Network Feminist Anthropology student award, the Labrecque-Lee book price, the Women’s Lifetime Achievement award, and of course the prestigious Weaver-Tremblay Award. Our meetings have our traditions of eating together, drinking, and dancing, and in taking a keen interest in each others’ work. We are encouraging and polite, and we are concerned and careful with matters that are important. I hope that we can maintain and celebrate these good qualities for our CASCA meetings the future. Thank you all.

Footnotes

(1) That first CASCA paper was never published but can be found here: Thom, Brian (1994) Narratives of Leadership: Oral History and the (Re)production of Tradition. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society, Vancouver. http://www.web.uvic.ca/~bthom1/Media/pdfs/ethnography/casca.htm

(2) My paper that year can be read online at: Thom, Brian (1998) Coast Salish Transformation Stories: Kinship, Place And Aboriginal Rights And Title in Canada. Paper Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Canadian Anthropology Society, Toronto. https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/ethnographicmapping/wp-content/uploads/sites/6278/2022/04/Thom_1998_
transformer_stories_complete.pdf

(3) Elements of the paper I gave that year eventually ended up in: Thom, Brian (2001) Aboriginal Rights and Title in Canada After Delgamuukw: Part One, Oral Traditions and Anthropological Evidence in the Courtroom. Native Studies Review. 14(1):1-26. http://iportal.usask.ca/docs/Native_studies_review/v14/issue1/pp1-26.pdf

(4) Thom, Brian (2020) Encountering Indigenous Legal Orders in Canada. Invited contribution to Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. Marie-Claire Foblets, editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198840534.013.15

(5) I presented a paper drawing on material that didn’t make it into the dissertation: Thom, Brian (2006) Place, personhood and claims in the contemporary Coast Salish world. Paper presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, May 9-14, 2006 http://www.web.uvic.ca/~bthom1/Media/pdfs/ethnography/2006_CASCA_paper.pdf

(6) My paper that year was published as: Thom, Brian (2009) Protecting the Human Rights of Coast Salish Peoples in British Columbia, Canada. Paper Presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Anthropology Society, 15 May 2009, Vancouver. Published in Culture, the Canadian Anthropology Society Newsletter 3(2):8-11, 2009 http://cas-sca.ca/casca/images/stories/Culture_3_2_2009.pdf

(7) The session was recorded for posterity by enthusiastic graduate students, and lives on at this YouTube URL: https://youtu.be/Z8vJEsb8Dq4?si=uF_N0kuu0hIrHgJ1&t=2419

(8) The paper I presented at this meeting contributed to what I think of as one of my more important works. I drew on it for an article in English, with a book chapter in French. Thom, Brian (2014) Reframing Indigenous Territories: Private Property, Human Rights and Overlapping Claims. American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 38(4):3-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.17953/aicr.38.4.6372163053512w6x . Thom, Brian (2014) Confusion sur les territoires autochtones au Canada. Pp. 89-106 dans Terres, territoires, ressources : Politiques, pratiques et droits des peuples autochtones, Sous la direction de Irène Bellier. Paris, L’Harmattan. https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=46070

(9) The paper I presented this year was eventually published as: Thom, Brian, Ben Colombi, and Tatiana Degai (2016)
Bringing Indigenous Kamchatka to Google Earth: Collaborative Digital Mapping with the Itelmen Peoples. Sibirica. 15(3):1-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/sib.2016.150301

(10) My most recent work in French recounts the struggles of Indigenous peoples from Vancouver Island to access justice on land rights through the International human rights system: Thom, Brian (2019) Tirer parti du droit international: la propriété privée et les droits des peuples autochtones au Canada. Pp 195-216 dans Les échelles de la gouvernance et des droits des peuples autochtones, Sous la direction de Irène Bellier et Jennifer Hays. Paris, L’Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-343-17978-0 https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=63415

Photo caption:

Brian Thom doing field notes in Yakweakwioose Longhouse, 1993. Photo taken by: Deborah Tuyttens, currently the Cultural Heritage Manager at the City of Burnaby.