Dr. Brian Thom

Working with Indigenous legal scholar Dr. Sarah Morales in UVic's Faculty of Law, Dr. Thom has an ongoing project on Coast Salish legal orders, and their entanglements with Canadian law.

One of the central contributions of this work is to develop a framework for ethnographic methods -- which attend culturally and histroically to a broad range of discourse, practice, and social and political structure -- to the emerging scholarship on Indigenous law in Canada. 

The work is attuned to practical application of these entangled legal orders to further empower Indigenous communities. Students participating in field schools through UVic's new JD/JID program are an important part of this work.

Working collaboratively with the WSANEC Leadership Council and the District of Saanich, Dr. Thom has an ongoing, award-winning project to centre Indigenous priorities, values, and goals into municipal land use planning.

The seaside community of Cordova Bay has been the centre of this work, where the protection of ancetral sites and the goal of making them more welcoming to Indigneous peoples have emerged as key themes.

Brian Thom founded and directs UVic’s Ethnographic Mapping Lab.

Dr. Thom’s ongoing work in mapping deploys ethnographic sensibilities to cartographic projects that are socially and politically powerful, particularly in support of Indigenous peoples title, rights and governance, and in promoting Indigenous place-based knowledge.

Dr. Thom primarily works with Google’s geo-tools (Google Earth, Google MyMaps, Google Earth Engine, Google Maps, etc). to leverage their powerful visualization framework with their highly accessible, low barriers workflows. Through these engagements, the research works to better reflect indigenous territoriality, land tenure, and senses of and attachments to place.

Dr. Thom has long been involved in working with Indigenous communities working to implement cooperative management and shared decision-making frameworks for conservation, resource development and land planning. He is currently co-investigator on the FRSC-funded Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives (CICADA, Colin Scott, McGill, PI), coordinating the thematic research axis on Indigenous community mapping. 

Brian Thom is a Senior Researcher on the SSHRC Partnership Grant project Conservation as Reconcilation, a 7-year program of work by Indigenous thought leaders, organizations, youth, elders alongside scholars and conservation agencies to support Indigenous-led conservation in Canada. 

Dr. Thom has supported the Hul'q'umi'num' Lands and Resources Society in their work with Parks Canada in Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.  

Dr. Thom has several ongoing collaborations with Coast Salish communities to commemorate, celebrate and make visible cultural landscapes that have been threatened or impacted by urban development, which these communities have chosen to share with the larger public.

These projects have critical dimensions of engaging with publics – from school children to municipal planners – who can benefit from careful and sensitive anthropological lenses that at once challenge ongoing colonial legacies, and appreciate and foreground Indigenous ways of knowing and being. 

The Commemorating Ye’yumnuts project with Cowichan Tribes is one of these projects. Their website provides resources for teachers working to incorporate Indigenous values and knowledge through BC’s new curriculum.

Ancient B.C. Indigenous settlement to become outdoor history classroom

Cowichan Valley ancestral site connects youth to their roots

Dr. Thom is leading research the qualitative research program of the CIHR-funded project Pulling Together For Health: Food Security and First Nations (Malek Batel, UdM, Principle Investigator). 

This multi-year project examines the strategies and outcomes of First Nations communities’ work to incorporate food security into Indigenous rights and governance recognition agreements.

This work draws on the community-generated hypothesis that the implementation of Aboriginal and treaty rights, and establishment of successful self-governance frameworks are key to re-establishing food security, and seeks to highlight best practices in this critical but largely unstudied social determinate of community health and well-being.

• Brian Thom is a member of the Montréal-based Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives where he works with Hul’q’umi’nun’ community partners and is co-lead of the community mapping axis.
• Brian Thom is a member of the Justice and Indigenous Peoples Rights (JUSTIP) International Research Network where he co-leads the axis on Indigenous peoples development, spatial and environmental justice.
• Brian Thom is a senior researcher in the Conservation as Reconcilation network on Indigenous-led conservation.

• 2020 - Addressing the Challenge of Overlapping Claims in Implementing the Vancouver Island (Douglas) Treaties. Anthropologica. 62(2):295-307 (31pgs). 
• 2020 - Encountering Indigenous Legal Orders in Canada. Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology. Marie-Claire Foblets, et al, eds. London: Oxford University Press.

• 2020 - Sarah Morales and Brian Thom. The Principle of Sharing and the Shadow of Canadian Property Law.  Pp. 120-162 in Creating Indigenous Property: Power, Rights, and Relationships, edited by Angela Cameron, Sari Graben, and Val Napoleon.  Toronto, University of Toronto Press. 

• 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.

• 2019 - Tirer parti du droit international: la propriété privée et les droits des peuples autochtones au Canada. Pp 195-216 in 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. 
• 2018 - Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa, Deanna Daniels, Tim Kulchyski, Andy Paul, Brian Thom, S. Marlo Twance & Suzanne Urbanczyk. Consultation, Relationship and Results in Community-Based Language Research. Bischoff, S. & C. Jany (eds.) Pp. 66-93. Perspectives on Language and Linguistics: Community-Based Research. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin/New York. Google Books. 

• 2017 - Entanglements in Coast Salish Ancestral Territories. Pp. 140-162 in Entangled Territorialities: Negotiating Indigenous Lands in Australia and Canada, Edited by Françoise Dussart and Sylvie Poirier. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

• 2016 - Thom, Brian, Benedict Colombi and Tatiana Degai – Bringing Indigenous Kamchatka to Google Earth:  Collaborative Digital Mapping with Itelmen Peoples. Sibirica. 15(3):1-30.
• 2014 – Reframing Indigenous Territories: Private Property, Human Rights and Overlapping Claims.  American Indian Culture and Research Journal.  38(4):3-28.  
• 2014 - Confusion sur les territoires autochtones au Canada. In Terres, territoires, ressources : Politiques, pratiques et droits des peuples autochtones, edited by Irène Bellier. Paris, L'Harmattan, pp. 89-106.  
• 2011 - Ecosystem Guide : a Hul'q'umi'num language guide to plants and animals of southern Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and the Salish Sea.  Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group: Ladysmith and Parks Canada, Sidney (with BT contributions to HTG-authored work). UVic Library, PDF Version 
• 2010 - The Anathema of Aggregation: Towards 21st Century Self-Government in the Coast Salish World. Anthropologica. 52(1):33-48. 
• 2009 - The Paradox of Boundaries in Coast Salish Territories. Cultural Geographies . 16(2):179-205.