Brian Noble

BA , MA, PhD (Alberta)

Email Phone

Location

FASS Building, Room 3115

Research Affiliate:

Polis Project on Ecological Governance, University of Victoria

Co-Chair, Working Group on Collaboration, Relationships, and Community Studies, MCRI Project on Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage: Theory, Practice, Policy, Ethics

Profile

A Socio-cultural Anthropologist, Professor Noble's major focus of research is political, legal, and knowledge practice relations between indigenous peoples’ and the apparatuses of the state. Central to this is a deep consideration of the practices of colonialism, and the possibility of anti-colonial movement. He has conducted ethnographic research on cultural and intellectual property, customary law, problems of ontology, ethics and trust in research, museums and institutional relations. The work necessarily addresses how anthropologists deploy their expertise in encounters between indigenous and state parties, and in the courts or other arenas.

A key current project with a network of engaged anthropologists in Canada addresses the possibility of treaty praxis and relational ontology as means of achieving political reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples’ collectives. In addition, Dr. Noble is Co-Invesigator in the SSHRC MCRI “Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage”, and co-chair of its Working Group on Collaboration and Relations. He has worked closely with Secwepemc, Mi'kmaq, Blackfoot, and Kwakwaka'wakw peoples.

Dr. Noble also conducts ethnographic and historical research on science, technology, and expertise as public culture, with interests in ethnology, palaeobiology, primatology, natural history, law, and public-scientific performances of the biological.

Recent Publications

Monograph

Accepted Theatre of the Articulate Dinosaur: An Anthropology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (under contract, publication 2010)

Articles and Chapters

2008 “Owning as Belonging/ Owning as Property: The Crisis of Power and Respect in First Nations Heritage Transactions with Canada.” C. Bell and V. Napoleon (eds.) First Nations Cultural Heritage and Law (vol.1: Case Studies, Voices, Perspectives.) Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 465-488.

2008 “Poomaksin—Skinnipiikani - Nitsiitapii Law, Transfers, and Making Relatives: Practices and Principles for Cultural Protection, Repatriation, Redress, and Heritage Law Making with Canada.” C. Bell and V. Napoleon (eds.) First Nations Cultural Heritage and Law (vol.1: Case Studies, Voices, Perspectives.) Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 258-311.

2008 “Strong Tradition and the Global "Knowledge Economy": The Problem of Integrity, Locality, and Effectiveness.” International Research Journal of Social Science, Pondicherry University, July 2008 issue.

2007 "Justice, Transaction, Translation: Blackfoot Tipi Transfers and WIPO’s Search for the Facts of Traditional Knowledge Exchange.” American Anthropologist, Vol. 109, Issue 2, pp. 338–349.

2002 “Nitooii—The Same that is Real’: Parallel Practice, Museums, and the Repatriation of Piikani Customary Authority.” Anthropologica XLIV (2002) 113-130.

2000 “Politics, Gender, and Worldly Primatology: The Goodall-Fossey Nexus”. In S.Strum & L.Fedigan (eds.) Primate Encounters: Models of Science, Gender, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Selected Conference Papers

2009 “Tripped up by Coloniality: Anthropologists as Agent/Tools of Indigenous Political Autonomy?”, presented in the Panel “Equal Opportunities, Cultural Rights, & Ethics of Filedwork & Publication”, organized by Smadar Lavie & Rafi Shubeli (Discussants, Fay Harrison & John Gledhill), Annual Meetings, American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C.

2009 “Living with and Living together”, Crabgrass Collective Symposium “Doing Politics, Undoing Anthropology”, at CASCA/AES Annual Meetings, May 13, 2009, UBC, Vancouver B.C.

2008 “On J. Kenrick’s ‘Decolonising Ourselves, Recovering Relationality: Refusing the Historical Inevitability Trajectory’”, presented in the Victoria Relational Anthropology Symposium for the Digitaria/Crabgrass Collective, Organizer Michael Asch (B. Noble programme developer), January 24-29, 2008. University of Victoria, Victoria B.C.

2007 “Answering Power/History: Indian Time, Labour Time and the Work of Theory”, presented in the Symposium “Anthropology’s Colonial Impasse: Engaging Indigenous Peoples, the Discipline, and the State Apparatus”, Organizers Brian Noble and Michael Asch, CASCA/AES Annual Meetings, May 9-12, 2007. University of Toronto, Toronto.

2006 “The Politics of Principles: Theorizing the Legal Appropriation of Anthropology”, presented in the session: “Envisioning History: Anthropological Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” Organizers: M. Asch & M. Pinkoski, CASCA Annual Meetings, May 11, 2006. Concordia University, Montreal.

2005 “Owning as Relational Sovereignty: Counting Coup, Late Liberalism, and the Interventions of INET-Secwepemc and OMRCC-Skinnipiikani”, presented in the Panel “Owning Knowledges and Practices: Emerging Struggles in the Global System”, organized by Murphy Halliburton (CUNY), Annual Meetings, American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C..

2005 “From the Fourth World to the WTO / Softwood Lumber Dispute: The Manuel Legacy of International Indigenous Activism”, invited talk for Lester Pearson International, Dalhousie University.

2003 “Land of the Fear, Home of the Bravado: The Mesozoic Empires of Henry Fairfield Osborn & Arthur Conan Doyle”, presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, Halifax, NS.

1999 “Saurian Resurrections”, MIT/Harvard Invited lecturer in Cultural Studies of Science, Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts.

Selected Symposia Organized

2009 Symposium & Workshop Organizer (with Crabgrass Collective) “Doing Politics, Undoing Anthropology” for the Crabgrass Collective, May 12-13, at CASCA/AES Annual Meetings. University of British Columbia, Vancouver B.C.

2008 Symposium [Programme Developer, with Principal Organizer Michael Asch] “Victoria Relational Anthropology Symposium” for the Digitaria/Crabgrass Collective, January 24-29, 2008. University of Victoria, Victoria B.C.

2007 Symposium [Co-Organizer w/ Michael Asch & Presenter]: “Anthropology’s Colonial Impasse: Engaging Indigenous Peoples, the Discipline, and the State Apparatus” 2007 Annual Meetings of the Canadian Anthropological Society & the American Ethnological Society, Toronto ON.

2003 Plenary Sessions & Roundtables [Organizer & Chair]: “Indigenizing the Global: Anthropology and 50 Years of Aboriginal Struggles for Self-Determination”, 30th Annual Meetings of the Canadian Anthropological Society & the Society for the Anthropology of North America, Halifax NS. Main Panelists: UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Rodolfo.Stavenhagen, Chief Arthur Manuel, Prof. June Nash, Prof. Mard-Adelard Tremblay, Prof. Michael Asch, Prof. Marie Battiste.

1998 Symposium [Brian Noble & Sarah Franklin, Co-Organizers]: “Recalibrating Life: Kinship Beyond Biology”, annual meetings of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, Halifax.