Professor Kyoung-Mann Cho (Anthropology, Mokpo National University, Korea) gives a talk in the ANSO building this Thursday on:

What Does the River Mean for You? People’s Notions of Nature and Aboriginal Rights in Contemporary Chehalis, BC

This research is on notions of nature in Chehalis, BC. In preliminary fieldwork a simple question has been asked: “what does the river mean to you?” The ‘river’ not only represents the Harrison river itself, which the Chehalis depend on, but also the ecological, spiritual linkages of river, forest, earth, salmon and other livings including human beings. The river also symbolizes the Chehalis territory from the ancestors beyond the present administrative one, i.e. the reservation. This research focusses on Chehalis ways of explaining their notions of the ‘river’ and their ways of claiming aboriginal rights. The notion of ‘oneness’ or harmony between nature and culture, between natural surroundings and human existence will be reconsidered.

The interim report of this fieldwork will suggest some basic reflexive questions. Is there a discrepancy between ideal notions of oneness and practical, objective exploitation? How do Chehalis residents understand these issues?

Thursday, March 8, 2007 in ANSO 205

Dr. Nefissa Naguib (Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway) gives a talk this week called “Visitors: Armenian Orphans in Jerusalem” ( Tuesday March 6, 5pm, Green College).

A lecture on how genocide, loss and deportation are experienced, conceptualized and generated among Armenians in Jerusalem, based on Dr. Naguib’s fieldwork and ongoing research on the Armenian Diaspora. Her presentation will focus upon the deportation of Armenians from Eastern Anatolia/now Turkey in 1915 to the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. It will sketch a history of the arrival of orphans and the immediate relief efforts which followed in an attempt to get at the individual stories which will tell us more about impacts of relief efforts on individual lives and how wider forces of history, altered by moments of conflict, are brought to bear on the lives of this community today.

Jointly sponsored by Green College and the Department of Anthropology.

A reminder about the upcoming colloquium by Andrew Martindale, this Thursday, February 15, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm in AnSo 205 (show me a map)

Archaeological Uncertainty about Causality in Agency and Structure: Translation Between Anthropological and Ts’msyeen Worlds

My work in comparing archaeological and Ts’msyeen views of history embodies an essential teleology: translation across the fronts of science/anthropology/indigeneity is valid because it is possible. In this paper, I reflect on the parallel narratives of archaeology and oral tradition that I have constructed and address two apparent contradictions.

Although archaeological data and Ts’msyeen adawx frequently conjoin, they are the product of distinct epistemological, perhaps paradigmatic, traditions whose difference, though essential to the process, is obscured and perhaps obviated by the act of conjunction. Is the generation of and comparison between archaeological and indigenous histories translative or hegemonic, and if the former, what is the nature of data in oral records? Second, both views of history are predicated on the assumption of intergenerational continuity­that some kind of structured Ts’msyeen-ness remains despite, for example, changes in fundamental categories of identity through the colonial era. Given the expectation of volatile agency in history, where does our confidence in the persistence of structure originate? What significance to we attach to similarities in materiality and behaviour when oral records make claims of cultural continuity through periods of change in the archaeological record, and vice versa? Using recent data from ongoing research in the Dundas Islands region of Ts’msyeen territory, I explore whether the philosophical anthropology of Paul Ricouer and the model of the reflexive individual suggest a synthesis of causalities between historical structure and agency.

A Forests and Oceans for the Future lecture in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology. For additional information, please contact Felice Wyndham at fwyndham@interchange.ubc.ca or 604 822 2548