Thomas 'Tad' McIlwraith

I am an anthropology instructor at Douglas College in New Westminster, British Columbia. At Douglas, I teach courses in general cultural anthropology, the anthropology of religion, and the anthropology of sex and gender. I also teach courses on the cultures of First Nations people in British Columbia and, more broadly, in all of Canada.

Research Themes

The overarching theme of my research program is the documentation of territoriality and the identification of rights of local Indigenous peoples to use land. It includes a reflexive effort to understand the attitudes and biases that underpin consulting anthropology projects such as traditional use studies. My academic work with Tahltans offers an example of my work on these topics. Faced with the efforts of international corporations to extract methane and coal from the heart of their hunting territories, the Tahltans at Iskut Village are resisting all the while asserting various identities and goals. To understand these Tahltan aspirations requires both familiarity with local ethnography and a wide appreciation of the global processes affecting the flow of capital and materials. I have found that local responses to confrontations between developers and hunters are characterized by the hunters themselves. Given similar protest actions like those visible right now in Gitksan territory these are provocative and challenging times for ethnographers studying the practices of Indigenous peoples’ rights.

I am writing a SSHRC Insight Development Grant proposal to investigate the history of Splatsin alienation from the Shuswap and Eagle Rivers. I am proposing to document the history of access to ancestral travel routes and fishing grounds. In doing so, I hope to address the story of colonial-era displacement and contemporary-era global challenges posed by private property rights and the increasing demands within the region for such resources as wood and water.

More broadly, I feel that applied Indigenous research needs a general theorizing within anthropology, starting from the basic proposition that Indigenous perspectives of land are different from those of the settler society. Moreover, the diversity of opinions that exist in BC’s Indigenous communities is frequently ignored by applied projects; dissenting voices are too often left unreported. A pre-condition of meaningful engagement with communities usually requires an acceptance that a variety of views exist; Indigenous communities have rarely a homogeneous outlook. If done effectively, applied work might diminish the stresses associated with development.

(Please see Current Research for more information.)

Education

I am a former graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. My committee is comprised of Dr. David Dinwoodie (Chair, UNM), Dr. Keith Basso (UNM), Dr. Sylvia Rodriguez (UNM), and Dr. Robert Brightman (Reed College, Oregon).

My dissertation was based on research during 2002, 2003, and 2004 with Tahltan-speaking (Athapaskan) peoples at Iskut, British Columbia, Canada. (Please see Dissertation Research for more information.)

My previous graduate studies were at the University of British Columbia where I completed a Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in November, 1995. My thesis there was based on fieldwork with Stó:lō people, Halkomelem speakers (Coast Salish) from the Fraser Valley in southern British Columbia. The thesis was titled “Construction of Local and Pan-Indian Elements in Contemporary Stó:lō Identity.”

My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Canadian History from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. At UofT, I attended Victoria College and graduated in April 1992.

(Page updated December 2011)