Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Dr. Bruce Miller on receiving the 2023 K.D. Srivastava Prize for Excellence in Scholarly Publishing for his book: Witness to the Human Rights Tribunals: How the System Fails Indigenous Peoples (UBC Press, 2023)
This prize is awarded by UBC Press and The Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation. The presentation will be at the 2023 Faculty Research Awards on June 3, 2024.
The jury praised the originality of the book and described Witness to the Human Rights Tribunal: How the System Fails Indigenous Peoples as a ” work of singular research and transparent scholarship.”
More about the book:
Witness to the Human Rights Tribunals opens the doors to the tribunal, revealing the interactions of lawyers, tribunal members, expert witnesses, and Indigenous litigants. Bruce Miller provides an in-depth look at the role of anthropological expertise in the courts, and draws on testimony, ethnographic data, and years of tribunal decisions to show how specific cases are fought and how expert testimony about racialization and discrimination is disregarded. His candid analysis reveals the double-edged nature of the tribunal itself, which re-engages with the trauma and violence of discrimination that suffuses social and legal systems while it attempts to protect human rights.
Grounded in expert experience, this important book asks hard questions. Should human rights tribunals be replaced, or paired with an Indigenous-centred system? How can anthropologists support an understanding of the pervasive discrimination that Indigenous people face? It definitively concludes that any reform must consider the problem of symbolic trauma before Indigenous claimants can receive appropriate justice.
An international audience of scholars and students of law, anthropology, the anthropology of law, human rights, and alternative justice will find this comprehensive work invaluable. Advocates, lawyers, and other professionals involved in human rights tribunals and extra-court proceedings will also find it an important addition to their libraries.
