Video, Past Event, Social Justice, Arts & Culture
Indigeneity, Cultural Property, and Intangible Heritage
When descendant groups are denied direct and meaningful engagement in decision-making, heritage management policies are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Access to and control over one’s own heritage is a basic human right essential to identity, wellbeing and worldview. The historic separation of Indigenous peoples from their heritage not only results in considerable economic and cultural harms, but is a form of violence. Community-based heritage initiatives are capable of challenging colonial structures in the research process without compromising the integrity of archaeology. Local and international approaches to negotiated practice were discussed at this event, as was an example of activism to protect ancestral burial grounds and sacred sites. Professor Nicholas also reviewed the contributions of the international IPinCH Project, which has worked with Indigenous groups worldwide since 2008.
Speaker Bio
George Nicholas (Ph.D.) is a professor of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia. He was the founding director of SFU’s Indigenous Archaeology Program in Kamloops (1991–2005), and has worked closely with the Secwepemc and other First Nations in British Columbia, and Indigenous groups worldwide. In 2013, he received the inaugural “Partnership Award” from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Nicholas’ research focuses on Indigenous peoples and archaeology, intellectual property issues relating to archaeology, the archaeology and human ecology of wetlands, and archaeological theory and practice, all of which he has published extensively on. Concurrently, he serves on the Editorial Board of the journals American Antiquity, Heritage and Society, and the Journal of the Archaeological Society of South Australia. He is the Co-Editor of the World Archaeological Congress’ Research Handbooks in Archaeology Series and was previously the Editor-in-Chief for the Canadian Journal of Archaeology.
Nicholas is also the director of the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) project, a 7-year initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The IPinCH Project (www.sfu.ca/ipinch ) is an international collaboration of over 50 scholars, over 100 Associate members and students, and 25 partnering organizations concerned with the theoretical, ethical, and practical implications of commodification, appropriation, and other flows of knowledge about the past, and with how these may affect communities, researchers, and other stakeholders.
Co-Presented by
SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and SFU Indigenous Research Institute and the Office for Aboriginal Peoples
