Athens, Ga. – James Anaya, one of the world’s foremost experts in international human rights and indigenous peoples law, will give the University of Georgia’s Willson Center/Environmental Ethics Certificate Program Odum Lecture Feb. 7 at 3:30 p.m. in room 125 of the Jackson Street Building. He will speak on “Reconciliation with the Native Americans Still Needed: Toward a More Wholesome American Landscape.”
The annual lecture is co-sponsored by the UGA Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program and hosted by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer, director of EECP.
Anaya is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He participated in the drafting of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007, and was the lead counsel for the indigenous parties in the case of Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua, in which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights upheld—for the first time—indigenous land rights as a matter of international law.
“For 30 years, both as an academic and a practicing lawyer, Jim Anaya has been at the forefront of the study of international law and the rights of indigenous people,” Dallmeyer said. “Last year he traveled across the U.S. meeting with tribal leaders and government officials to assess the human rights situation for Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. In light of our American history, I look forward to hearing his thoughts on how we might move toward reconciliation.”
Anaya is Regents’ and James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy in the James E. Rogers College of Law of the University of Arizona. He served on the law faculty at the University of Iowa from 1988 to 1999; and he has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Toronto and the University of Tulsa.
The Willson Center/EECP Odum Lecture is named for Eugene Odum, a UGA instructor from 1940 until his retirement in 1984. He has been called the “father of modern ecology” and was the author of the pioneering book “Fundamentals of Ecology.” At UGA, Odum was instrumental in the creation of the Odum School of Ecology, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Marine Institute at Sapelo Island.
For more information on the lecture, see http://willson.uga.edu/programs/public-programs/willson-center-eecp-odum-lecture/. For more on the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, see http://www.uga-eecp.com/.
Willson Center for Humanities and Arts
The Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts is a unit of the Office of the Vice President for Research at UGA. In the service of its mission to promote research and creativity in the humanities and arts, the Willson Center sponsors and participates in numerous public events on and off the UGA campus throughout the academic year. It supports faculty through research grants, lectures, symposia, publications, visiting scholars, visiting artists, collaborative instruction, public conferences, exhibitions and performances. For more information, see http://willson.uga.edu/.