My request for help finding an ethnography to teach in a First Nations of British Columbia anthropology class has generated more than a dozen comments on the blog, via email and through facebook. Since I wasn’t entirely clear that I was looking for an ethnography of an indigenous group or community — but the list [...]
I had the pleasure of visiting the Capilano University Archaeology Field School at one of their sites in the Seymour watershed (North Vancouver) this morning. In its twelfth year, and always under the direction of Bob Muckle, the Field School is unearthing a Japanese history in the forests of Vancouver’s north shore. The site is [...]
One of my summer projects is to learn more about public attitudes towards indigenous rights in British Columbia. I am also looking for current examples of the stigmas and stereotypes associated with indigenous hunting by non-native people (Figure 2, in which foraging is confused with pastoralism, for example). Conveniently, events surrounding a blockade in Tahltan [...]
Flip Video MinoHD Originally uploaded by TFM I’ve been using the tiny Flip Video MinoHD (by Pure Digital Technologies) for about a month now. I’ve had a chance to try it in a fieldwork setting (elder interviews) and while traveling on vacation. While I have never had that much interest in doing video (professionally or [...]
A student asked me recently for examples of ethnographies in which the anthropologist ‘had a bad time’. He observed that in all of the anthropological writings he has read, the anthropologists generally present themselves and their experiences positively. I was stumped. The ethnography for the course, a survey of Canada’s first peoples, is Robert Jarvenpa’s [...]
On the heels of my less-than-well-researched post about a free topographical map site — Ed pointed out how to get scanned versions of Canadian National Topographic Series (NTS) maps in the comments — let me point you to a terrific site for uploading GPS tracks and logs and plotting those tracks against all sorts of [...]
Dease Lake Caribou Originally uploaded by TFM I spent last week — my reading break — in northwestern British Columbia. It was my first trip back to the area during the winter since I completed my dissertation fieldwork in March of 2003. It was a real treat to visit old friends. Some things hadn’t changed: [...]
The Whale Hunt presents Jonathan Harris’ experience among Inuipiat Eskimos of Barrow Alaska in stunning photography and a unique, narrative-driven interface. From Harris’ statement: The purpose of this project was threefold: First, to experiment with a new interface for human storytelling. The photographs are presented in a framework that tells the moment-to-moment story of the [...]
Two stories from the Globe and Mail in the past couple of days concerning the Mbendjele Yaka (also Pygmies; northern Congo) use of GPS units to document sacred sites and locations of traditional use. The broader context: logging of the Mbendjele Yaka’s forested territory. To get around the problem of low literacy rates, a system [...]
It has been a long time since I used a consent form in a research setting where I did not know the people I was interviewing. It happened to me recently, however, and reminded me just how uncomfortable consent forms can be especially when they appear within minutes of introductions across a table. While I [...]
