By Mary-Lee Mulholland, Mount Royal University

Welcome to the newest issue of Culture on Resilience/Résilience!  After everything that 2020 has doled out, it is with trepidation that I go to my “home office” tucked in the corner of my bedroom between the bed and bathroom door, to look at the morning news. In this time of COVID-19, I know that all of us are juggling child and elder care, increased teaching workloads with decreased resources, new and old forms of precarity, and the health and safety of loved ones and ourselves.  The world seems to be literally on fire around us and a good dose of resiliency seems to be in order.

The resiliency of CASCA comes from the commitment of our members and volunteers. Hence, please join me in welcoming new members to the CASCA Executive Committee, including Communications Officer Alex Oheler (University of Regina), Anglophone Member-at-Large Maggie Cummings (University of Toronto, Scarborough), and a special thanks to Éric Gagnon Poulin for taking on the role as President-Elect after serving as Communications Officer.  These new members join continuing members me, Mary-Lee Mulholland (Mount Royal University), Past-President Sabrina Doyon (Laval Université), Secretary Millie Creighton (University of British Columbia), Francophone Member-at-Large Marie Michèle Grenon (Laval Université), and Treasurer Tad McIlwraith (Guelph University). 

I would also like to thank outgoing members including Past-President Pamela Downe (University of Saskatchewan) and Anglophone Member-at-Large Marieka Sax (University of Northern British Columbia).   During her tenure as president, Pam Downe completed the enormous task of organizing the joint meeting with the AAA while completing a host of other crucial initiatives, most notably creating the CASCA Teaching Excellence (CATE) Awards.  In addition to her work as a Member-at-Large, Marieka Sax collaborated with Marie Michèle Grenon to design and implement the Sexual Harassment Survey and are the co-chairs of the newly created Sexual Harassment Working Group.  Thank you Pamela and Marieka for the dedication and vision you brought to your roles.  Of course, all the work of the executive and the association is supported by the incomparable Karli Whitmore. Thank you, Karli!

This past year has been an unprecedented year for our association in uncertain and troubling times.  We made the difficult decision to cancel our annual conference, a first in our near fifty-year history.  The annual meeting is such an important time for us to connect and reconnect with students and colleagues, disseminate new research, and contemplate future directions of anthropology in Canada.   As we know, the tremendous labor of organizing a conference comes from a commitment to both our discipline and our organization.  Our colleagues at University of Western Ontario stepped up to host this conference on the heels of the joint CASCA-AAA conference in Vancouver and in conjunction with Congress, the first time since 2010.   That made this task even more formidable but, despite this, the local organizing committee assembled an amazing program under the theme Doing/Undoing with leading scholars and incredible plenaries.  On behalf of the CASCA executive and all our members, I would like to extend our gratitude to the local organizing committee Kim Clark, Andrew Walsh, Greg Beckett, Pamela Block, and Karli Whitmore for so tirelessly organizing and, later, cancelling the conference with care and attention.

Our next conference, on the theme of Engagements and Entanglements/Engagements et Enchevêtrements, will be hosted by the University of Guelph (https://cas-sca.ca/conference/upcoming-conference/information).  The local organizing committee (LOC) surveyed members for their expectations and comfort with the proposed 2021 conference format. Based on member feedback and current health recommendations, the LOC decided to proceed with a virtual conference and they have already begun to research various platforms and formats to make this conference a creative, engaging, and exciting experience.  In accordance with our members’ wishes, we hope this virtual conference will be an opportunity to redesign our annual conference to be more accessible and sustainable.

Sadly, one of the many consequences of cancelling the 2020 conference was that we were unable to celebrate the Weaver-Tremblay Award recipient, Dr. Bruce Granville Miller in person.  Dr. Miller has been an active member of CASCA for many years, including several terms on the executive, and his research and advocacy with Indigenous communities exemplifies the spirit of the Weaver-Tremblay Award.  We are pleased to say that the 2021 conference will host both the 2020 and 2021 Weaver-Tremblay Award recipients.

Meeting in November 2019 with the joint CASCA-AAA conference and cancelling the 2020 conference also meant that we have had two consecutive online AGMs. These online AGMs were successful with a healthy turnout and participation.  Although, we were able to meet together with a special meeting in Vancouver, the thought of a third online AGM is incredibly disappointing.  Therefore, in partnership with the LOC at the University of Guelph, we are exploring a different format for the 2021 AGM.  The required business of the AGM, in particular accepting the treasurer’s report, will occur in a similar format as the last two online AGMs.  However, in addition to this, we hope to stream reports from the executive, the networks, celebrate and recognize recipients of the Salsibury Award, Labrecque-Lee book awards, the new teaching awards, and CASCA fellows as well as have an opportunity for questions and comments from members.    Let me take the opportunity here to congratulate the 2020 co-winners of the Labrecque-Lee Award – Wendy Wickwire for At the Bridge: James Teit and the Anthropology of Belonging and Greg Beckett for There is no more Haiti: Between Life and Death in Port-au-Prince.

This was also a busy year for Anthropologica.  Our new Editor-In-Chief, Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier and Anglophone Editor Sue Frohlick continue to produce amazing issues that further elevate the exposure and reputation of the journal.  With the support of the Open Access Working Group, Anthropologica is proceeding with the transition to open access.  This transition was only possible with the support of members through the annual levy.  Thank you! 

Finally, 2020 has been a year of continued and intensified violence, racism, and discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and racialized people in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere.  The ongoing violation of Indigenous territorial and political sovereignty was highlighted by the use of RCMP and police force in Wet’suwet’en, Haudenosaunee, and Mi’kmaw territories.  In addition, social protests and media attention have brought to the forefront the ongoing experience of police brutality, state sanctioned violence, hate motivated crime, and death of Black and Indigenous people. CASCA issued statements of solidarity for both Wet’suwet’en sovereignty and Black Lives Matters, plus as an organization we accepted a member sponsored resolution on Indigenous territorial and political sovereignty.  Of course, as anthropologists and as a organization our commitment to social justice must go beyond statements of solidarity.  Several of our members participated in the #ScholarStrike action and many more of our members’ research and advocacy work to understand, address, overcome these injustices. As members of this organization we must also be prepared to examine the way in which Black, Indigenous, and racialized scholars experience both the field of anthropology and our organization. The 2020 conference had plans for a social networking event for Indigenous, Black, and racialized scholars in anthropology and a roundtable organized by Tania Granadillo de Espanol to discuss just this.  In partnership with Tania Granadillo de Espanol and the LOC at Guelph, the CASCA Executive will support a virtual networking experience in 2021 and a roundtable to launch the creation of CASCA network for Black, Indigenous, and racialized members.  More details will follow, but in the meantime, if you are interested in participating you can contact Tania Granadillo de Espanol (tgranadi@uwo.ca) or myself (mmulholland@mtroyal.ca).

On a personal note, I would like to extend my gratitude to our two outgoing Presidents Pamela Downe and Sabrina Doyon. While their presidencies spanned these unusual times, they demonstrated flexibility, vision, creativity, commitment, and tenacity. Thanks Pam and Sabrina!

Mary-Lee Mulholland (she/her)

Mount Royal University