By John Welch
On a particularly busy (not to mention sunny and sultry) Friday afternoon (April 5), moderators, discussants, and audience members gathered at the Honolulu Convention Center at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, to discuss how archaeologists are taking up the challenges being presented by the growing corpus of international policy pertaining to the rights of Indigenous peoples and the just and proper conduct of large-scale land management projects.
The session was organized and moderated by John R. Welch (SFU professor and IPinCH Steering Committee member) and Ian Lilley (U Queensland professor and IPinCH team member). The discussants represented much of the range of experience and perspective for professionals engaged in CRM driven by proposals for mines, utilities, and other big projects in countries that lack fully developed legal frameworks for identifying and reducing the adverse effects on tangible and intangible cultural heritage: Elizabeth Bradshaw (Rio Tinto Services Limited), Joe Ezzo (U Arizona), Alvaro Higueras (SFU and IPinCH Associate), Andrew Mason (Golder Associates), Christophe Sand (New Caledonia Archaeological Institute), and Willem Willems (U Leiden).
Following the presentations and Q&A, participants, IPinCH team members, and guests gathered for refreshment and additional discussions at the Mai Tai Bar on the roof of the Ala Moana Center.
Many thanks to all the participants, and to Golder Associates and IPinCH for supporting the reception.
