Brian Thom

He has done extensive fieldwork since the early 1990s with Coast Salish communities in southwest British Columbia, and more limited fieldwork with other Indigenous peoples in Canada, the US, and the Russian Far East . He has frequently been interviewed or cited by the media for his anthropologists’ perspective on Indigenous rights and title issues.[1] In 2014 his work on ethnographic mapping using Google Earth was featured in a 2-page weekend spread in the Globe and Mail,[2] an article that won the reporter Justine Hunter the Jack Webster Award for Digital Journalism.[3]

Thom received his Ph.D. from McGill University in 2005, his doctoral dissertation draws on ideas of place to situate a detailed political ethnography of southeast Vancouver Island Coast Salish peoples' relationships to land. .

Early in his career he conducted archaeological research in southwest British Columbia which attended to the dynamics of social and cultural change and continuity in the Salish Sea over the past two millennia. For fifteen years he worked for Sto:lo Nation and the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group as a negotiator, researcher, and senior advisor. Since joining the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, his research has focused on the political, social and cultural processes that surround Indigenous people's efforts to resolve title and rights claims, and establish self-government. He has published in English and French, chronicling the experiences of the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group case against Canada at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Thom has served on the editorial board of the Canadian Anthropology Society journal Anthropologica[4] and is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute.[5]

(2019) Leveraging International Power: Private Property and the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. pp. 184–203 in Scales of Governance and Indigenous Peoples' Rights, edited by Jennifer Hays and Irène Bellier. (Law and the Postcolonial: Ethics, Politics, and Economy Series), Routledge, London. ISBN 9781138944480 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315671888

(2019) Tirer parti du droit international: la propriété privée et les droits des peuples autochtones au Canada. pp 195–216 dans Les échelles de la gouvernance et des droits des peuples autochtones, Sous la direction de Irène Bellier et Jennifer Hays. Paris, L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-343-17978-0 https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=63415

(2017) Entanglements in Coast Salish Ancestral Territories. In Entangled Territorialities: Indigenous Peoples from Canada and Australia in the 21st Century, edited by Françoise Dussart & Sylvie Poirier. pp. 140–162. Anthropological Horizons Series, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. https://utorontopress.com/ca/entangled-territorialities-2

(2016) Thom, Brian; Colombi, Benedict J.; Degai, Tatiana (1 January 2016). "Bringing Indigenous Kamchatka to Google Earth: Collaborative Digital Mapping with the Itelmen Peoples". Sibirica. 15 (3): 1–30. doi:10.3167/sib.2016.150301.

(2014) Thom, Brian (January 2014). "Reframing Indigenous Territories: Private Property, Human Rights and Overlapping Claims". American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 38 (4): 3–28. doi:10.17953/aicr.38.4.6372163053512w6x.

Thom, Brian (2014) Confusion sur les territoires autochtones au Canada. pp. 89–106 dans Terres, territoires, ressources : Politiques, pratiques et droits des peuples autochtones, Sous la direction de Irène Bellier. Paris, L'Harmattan. https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=livre&no=46070

(2012) Angelbeck, Bill; Grier, Colin (October 2012). "Anarchism and the Archaeology of Anarchic Societies: Resistance to Centralization in the Coast Salish Region of the Pacific Northwest Coast". Current Anthropology. 53 (5): 547–587. doi:10.1086/667621.

(2010) Thom, Brian (2010). "The Anathema of Aggregation: Toward 21st-Century Self-Government in the Coast Salish World". Anthropologica. 52 (1): 33–48. JSTOR 29545993.

(2009) Thom, Brian (April 2009). "The paradox of boundaries in Coast Salish territories". Cultural Geographies. 16 (2): 179–205. doi:10.1177/1474474008101516. S2CID 144554257.

(2008) Thom, Brian (19 November 2008). "Disagreement-in-principle: Negotiating the right to practice Coast Salish culture in treaty talks on Vancouver Island, BC". New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. 2 (1): 23–30.

(2004) Thom, Brian (2004). "Le sens du lieu et les revendications territoriales contemporaines des Salishs de la Côte" [The sense of place and contemporary land claims of the Coast Salish people]. Recherches Amérindiennes Au Québec (in French). 34 (3): 59–74, 2, 116–117. hdl:1828/6609. ProQuest 1697485111.

(2003) Thom, Brian (2003). "The Anthropology of Northwest Coast Oral Traditions". Arctic Anthropology. 40 (1): 1–28. doi:10.1353/arc.2011.0035. JSTOR 40316573. S2CID 162868717.

(2001) Harlan I. Smith and the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. In Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, edited. by I. Krupnik and W. Fitzhugh. pp. 139–180. Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington. https://archive.org/stream/gatewaysexplorin12001krup#page/138/mode/2up

(1992) Thom, Brian (December 1992). "Whalen Farm Revisited: 40 Year Later". The Midden. 24 (5): 3–6.

(1992) Thom, Brian (1992). "An Investigation of Interassemblage Variability within the Gulf of Georgia Phase". Canadian Journal of Archaeology. 16: 24–31. JSTOR 41102848.