UAF anthropology colloquium Friday, September 5, 2008
Bruce Rigsby, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Queensland : Places, Property, and People: Revisiting the Columbia Plateau from an Australian Perspective
abstract
The topic of Indian property in land in classical North America has not received the attention by anthropologists that, say, has been devoted to kinship and religion. When the topic became important during the period (1946-1977) of the Indian Claims Commission in the United States, some anthropologists worked for Indian claimant groups and some for the government, but virtually none did serious theoretical and empirical work on Indian systems of land tenure, as distinct from systems of land use. The same disinclination to attend to property in land was found in Australian Aboriginal anthropology until the Mabo Decision (1992) and the Native Title Act (1993) put the matter into plain sight and the land claim and native title process got underway. I’ve been a player and participant in land claim and native title work on eastern Cape York Peninsula since the early 1990s. When I turned my attention back to the Columbia Plateau (in Eastern Oregon and Washington states) several years ago, I found that my Australian experience helped me to identify new perspectives and understandings of classical and post-classical Columbia Plateau culture and society. These build upon the work of earlier researchers and thinkers, some of whom are indigenous Plateau people.
back to anthropology department home page