Anthropology Colloquium is the department’s speaker series that invites a mixture of anthropologists from within and outside of UBC to present their research. This speaker series is scheduled throughout the academic year, typically with a lunch reception in the AnSo Lounge.
The Vulnerability of Archaeological Logic in Aboriginal Rights and Titles Cases in Canada
Thursday October 3rd, 2013
Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Seminar Room (307), 12:30-1:30
Andrew Martindale
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of British Columbia
Abstract:
Join us for a topical discussion on the history of archaeological evidence in Aboriginal rights and titles cases in Canada, which illustrates a fundamental vulnerability between archaeological knowledge claims and its capacity to understand history. In recent post-Delgamuukw court cases, opponents of aboriginal rights and titles have exploited this contradiction, successfully restricting archaeology’s role to refuting evidence from indigenous oral records. If archaeology is to assert its capacity to reveal history within rights and titles cases, it must address two issues: lingering intellectual naïveté regarding interpretive links between material gestures and cultural identity, and a fundamental ethnocentrism in our understanding of humanity that reflects contemporary asymmetries of power.
