While I don’t have time to get into this at the moement, I do worry about pronouncements about whether local knowledges are intact enough or not, or whether the anthropological record has “more”. There is a very different anti-colonial political argument to be made, that we ought to be attending to the simple fact that indigenous peoples, especially those in Canada who have been subject to the rather weak terra nullius premises of state sovereignty assertion, have a better claim to control of their knowledges (where ever they have ended up) as they are, in themselves, political societies already, that is they already have jurisdiction. The colonialism is in the fact that Canada and many states world wide are in denial on this point. Michael Asch, among others, has had much to say on this matter.

In this context, collaboration (or research alliances) are pragmatic actions in the current moment. Where things go from here will be interesting, to say the least. My hope is that anthropology will find its best impulses, developing approaches which are, in real pragmatic terms, anti-colonial. We have to start from where we are. There are good signs coming from folks like George Nicholas. Know that the Calgary Herald article barely scratches the surface on these points, but helpfully may be winning some public attention to the matter, whatever populist tropes journalism trades in.