Hugh Brody

Hugh Brody (born 1943) is a British anthropologist, writer, director and lecturer.

In the 1950s he worked as an accountant in Sheffield before passing the entrance examinations for the University of Oxford.

He studied at Trinity College, Oxford.

He taught social philosophy at Queen's University Belfast.

He is an Honorary Associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, and an Associate of the School for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.

This was a mediation between the Idaho Power Company and the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho in relation to the building of the hydro dams on the Snake River in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, as a graduate student at Oxford, Brody was influenced by Maurice O'Sullivan's book Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years a-Growing), and worked as an anthropologist in Ireland.

This led to his book Inishkillane, Change And Decline in the West of Ireland.

The field-work for this study took him to Connemara and West Cork, where he lived and worked with peasant farmers, fishermen and as a barman in a village bar.

Contracted by Raidió Teilifís Éireann he spent time on Gola Island, off the coast of County Donegal, research that led to his contribution to the book Gola, The Life and Last Days of an Island Community, co-authored with F. H. A. Aalen.

In 1969, he did his first Canadian work, supported by the Northern Science Research Group at what was then the Canadian Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.

This took him to the skid row area of Edmonton, Alberta in the Canadian Prairies.

His report on that work, Indians on Skid Row, published in 1970, led to changes in government policy, especially in relation to Native Friendship Centres – crucial in giving support to Native people adrift in Canadian cities.

In the 1970s, as a research officer with the Northern Science Research Group, he did extensive field work in the Arctic, living with Inuit in the communities of Pond Inlet on Baffin Island and Sanikiluaq on the Belcher Islands.

He learned two dialects of Inuktitut, North Baffin and South Hudson Bay, and wrote The People's Land, Inuit and Whites in the Eastern Arctic.

This is a book that looks at how colonial relations, through the history of the fur trade, church missions and the Canadian government, have shaped the social and psychological circumstances of the far north.

The argument and descriptions focus very much on a particular time in a particular place, but resonate with parallel experiences among indigenous peoples around the world.

In the course of his work with the Northern Science Research Group, Brody also developed an innovative program that aimed to give new levels of support for families who wanted to live on the land.

Brody was also one of those who in the mid-1970s first urged within the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs the idea of the separation of the Canadian north into two indigenous jurisdictions, with that of the east becoming an Inuit political territory.

In 1975, Brody resigned from his position in the Canadian Civil Service.

He was then based at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, where he became an Honorary Associate.

In 1976–1978 he worked on the Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project, in the Northwest Territories, where he was co-ordinator for the land use mapping carried out in the North Baffin region.

He also assembled an Arctic-wide account of Inuit perceptions of land occupancy, building a collage of Inuit voices from all the communities of the Northwest Territories.

In 1977, Brody was a witness to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, giving evidence on the nature of northern development, alcohol abuse and Inuit languages.

He then became a member of Justice Thomas R. Berger's staff, helping to prepare the two volume report that set out the remarkable conclusions of the inquiry.

He later worked on a similar project with Inuit and settlers of Labrador, which was published in Our Footsteps Are Everywhere (1978).

In the 1980s, working for the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Brody lived and worked with the Dunne-za and Cree of northeast British Columbia – the project and experiences that led to his book Maps And Dreams.

This account of anthropological research and cultural mapping with a hunting community, and especially the laying of frontier development onto the ways Dunne-za and Cree see and understand their territories, became a classic of indigenous studies.

Its use of alternating chapters, switching between first person narrative and social scientific writing has also given it a significant place in the history of the literature of anthropology.

Brody worked with Justice Berger again in 1991–1992 as a member of the World Bank's Morse Commission, which had the job of assessing implications of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, a vast hydro and irrigation project in western India.

His role in public inquiries and assessment of the impact of large scale developments on indigenous communities continued when he became Chairman of the Snake River Independent Review.

Since 1997, Brody has worked on projects in southern Africa.

This began when he helped co-ordinate background research for the ‡Khomani San Land Claim in South Africa's southern Kalahari.

This work led to filming many aspects of the claim, including its aftermath.

This came into being with the creation of Nunavut in 1999.

He held the Canada Research Chair at University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia from 2004 to 2018.

He is Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

In 2008, accompanied by the Canadian cinematographer Kirk Tougas, he filmed the beneficiaries of the claim as they reflected upon how it had changed their lives in the nine years since the claim was accepted.

Working with the UK NGO Open Channels, and funded by the UK charity Comic Relief, Brody also led projects with and for San in Namibia and Botswana.

The film work in South Africa led to the DVD Tracks Across Sand – four and a half hours of film edited by long-term collaborator Haida Paul shot in the course of land claims research, oral history and language research in the northern Cape of South Africa.