Annual Conference

96th Annual SWAA Conference

Fresno, CA  

March 12-13, 2027

Register now for the 96th annual SWAA conference! 

Theme: “Humans: Structure and Possibility”

Structure and agency are entwined, partners, not opponents. Human beings build social structures, just as they alter, challenge, and sometimes transform them. How and with what effects do people engage with political, economic, social, and cultural structures that simultaneously constrain, enable, and channel their efforts to make meaning and take action? Let us come together and trace the human struggle to think, see, and act at multiple scales, from the widest possible structural frame to the most quotidian – yet equally consequential – human doings. We need all the examples of human agency and efficacy we can muster. To engage in the possible is to hope and the people with whom we work offer us this every day. So let us seek out human creativity and agency even in the darkest times.

Plenary Speaker:
Professor hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies)
University of British Columbia

hagwil hayetsk, also known as Charles Menzies is a member of Gitxaała Nation on the north coast of what is now called British Columbia. Charles is a professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Born and raised in the resource extraction town of Prince Rupert, Charles was born in a fishing family and worked himself as a commercial fisherman into the mid-1990s. His Gitxaała name, hagwil hayetsk, means enduring copper.  A copper is a form of chiefly property made of copper metal in the form of a shield. This name was placed on him in a feast in Lach Klan (Gitxaała’s home village) that honoured the passing of the late Fred Gamble. The name is part of the house of Ts’bassa/H:el and has a long history of its own.

P lenary Title: A Future Anthropology of Reconciliation – Heeding the Voices of the People of Long Ago

In this presentation I stand alongside the łagyigyet – the people of long ago, our ancestral knowledge keepers – by asking how First Nations and World Indigenous theories and methods are situated within the wider practice of anthropology.  Historically anthropology has positioned itself as a comparative social science drawing from Indigenous knowledge to augment and create theories about Indigenous peoples and societies. As a First Nation’s scholar I insist it is not sufficient for researchers to use Indigenous communities as data. Rather, one needs to enact respectful relations with Indigenous theory makers and Indigenous theory making. In this presentation I consider the work of four generations of First Nations anthropologists – how did (or do) they navigate our shared slot of ’native’ anthropologist in a space that prioritizes a foreign gaze.  Building upon work of First Nations scholars we will consider the place of Indigenous intellectual traditions in reframing a future anthropology of reconciliation.