Weaver-Tremblay Prize Anthropology in the Court and Tribunal

I am speaking from unceded, ancestral Coast Salish lands in Vancouver, the home of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. My thanks to President Mulholland, Past President Doyon, and members of the CASCA executive for all of their work regarding this award, and to Tad McIlwraith and Beth Finnis of the CASCA conference organizing committee. Thanks also to those who submitted the materials for the award, particularly Tad McIlwraith and Molly Malone. As an immigrant to Canada thirty-one years ago, it is a particular pleasure to be here today receiving this award, which has so many notable alumni, many of whom I know. I didn’t know Sally Weaver or Marc-Adélard Tremblay, but I am delighted to receive an award in their names. Canadian anthropology, as this prize recognizes, has long held a special concern for using anthropology to the benefit of society and to tackle difficult dilemmas. Canadian anthropology and CASCA, and my department at UBC, have been wonderful homes for me. My most sincere thanks to the Canadian and other anthropologists gathered online today, including my Brazilian friends. There is a different sort of opportunity structure here in Canada which often enables people’s talents to be cultivated, unlike the hyper-capitalism to our south which so often results in overlooking and failing to cultivate their young. That is, to me, a distinct difference between countries and anthropologies. One other note about Canada: there were wonderful scholars here long before I showed up, and a great group behind my generation of “young old people,” including Thomas McIlwraith, Jane McMillan, Brian Thom, Bill Angelbeck, Molly Malone, Dave Schaepe, Morgan Ritchie, Brenda Fitzpatrick, and many others. These younger people are inspirational to me and fun to be with. And, there is a highly intelligent still younger generation with a nose for finding and working on issues that count, including Riley Bertoncini, starting at McGill. There is every reason for optimism for our discipline. I recall listening to Peter Stephenson’s eloquent talk at this event some years ago. That was a good model. I got some advice about giving this talk. My brother told me to make the talk funny. Medical anthropologist Bill McKellin, by way of warning, told me that Canadians don’t like people talking about themselves. In total disregard of their advice, I’m shooting for meandering and personal. I want to talk about the anthropology I have deployed in the various legal issues I’ve been involved in over the last decades and the Canadians who produced this anthropology. I recently wrote an ethnography of court and tribunal rooms, tentatively titled Inside and Outside the Tribunal Hall: An Anthropologist Encounters Human Rights. I’m trying to make sense of the contributions anthropology and social science make in Indigenous legal processes and how these processes might be further transformed. It falls into the category of the anthropology of law. To do this, I situate my work at the intersection of the state and the Indigenous nations, sometimes a difficult place to be. Sherry Ortner (2016) recently wrote about what she calls dark anthropology; anthropology that focuses on hard dimensions of social life (power, discrimination, inequality, and oppression) and the resultant depression and hopelessness. There is also, she says, the anthropology of the good, of the good life and happiness, morality, and ethics. And, a third sort of anthropology of the good – studies of resistance, activism, critique. Anthropology, she writes, needs studies of the good and the dark and resistance. My work encompasses this, I believe. I’ll illustrate how. First, though, I have recently been wondering how it is that I have spent most of …