Congratulations to Dr. Charles Menzies (hagwil hayetsk) who was selected to deliver the Michael Kearney Memorial Lecture at the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Annual Meeting on March 27, 2025.
Each year, the SfAA selects an outstanding scholar whose presentation explores the intersection of three themes (migration, human rights, transnationalism) with a specific focus on a contemporary issue/problem.
This year, Dr. Menzies keynote was titled: Confronting Capitalism, Imperialism, and Settler Colonialism: First Nations Authority and Jurisdiction on the Northwest Coast of Canada
Keynote Description:
The history of Gitxaala, my home nation, stretches back beyond the last ice age. For millennia upon millennia out lagyigyet (ancestors) have lived in this place. Our histories talk of strangers passing through of refugees fleeing calamity, of newcomers seeking treasure. Some of these people continued their journey, others stayed. Some who stayed become productive members of our community, but the most recent newcomers, those who are called k’amksiwah (settlers), were not content to join our communities. The k’amksiwah were driven by other desires. Our first encounters with them revolved around trade. We retained control over the process of production. As the decades of the 1800s passed, the k’amksiwah became more interested in possessing the process of production themselves. Our roles became more entangled as labourers and brokers of labour. At the same time the tragedy of disease cut our communities in half and half again. Circumstance combined with disruption laid the foundation of the expansion of industrial capitalism within our laxyuup Drawing from Gitxaala’s experience in the lazyuup with k’amksiwah from their first appearance to the present (1787-2024) experience this paper interrogates the conceptual framework of capitalism, imperialism, and settler colonialism as effective explanatory frameworks that support the continuation and resurgence of First Nations authority and jurisdiction.
About the Michael Kearney Memorial Lecture
The Michael Kearney Memorial Lecture honours the memory and career of the prominent scholar of transnational migration. Throughout his professional career, Michael Kearney had an abiding interest in three themes which are of particular importance in contemporary society – migration, human rights, and transnationalism. The interest was manifest in his doctoral research (“The Winds of Ixtepeji”) and developed with more precise focus in the 1980’s, when he devoted his energies to the plight of migrants from Mexico. These studies and their findings led to a greater involvement with the formulation of public policy and provided the basis for reports and testimony before Federal and California State Legislative Hearings. They sharpened and crystallized his commitment to applied anthropology as a tool for understanding and resolving problems in the human condition.
