Colin Samson (1985)

Senior Lecturer in Sociology-University of Essex

Colin Samson is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex in England. He has been working with the Innu peoples of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula in Canada since 1994. His associations with them led to co-authoring the widely-cited human rights report Canada's Tibet: the killing of the Innu which won the Italian Pio Manzo peace prize in 2000. His book A Way of Life that Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu (Verso Press) won the Pierre Savard Award given by the International Council for Canadian Studies in 2006. He has written a number of recent book chapters and articles on indigenous peoples' human rights and the role of anthropology in indigenous rights conflicts. In 2009 he worked with German film-maker Sarah Sandring on a film about the relocation of the Mushuau Innu in 1948. Over 2009/10 he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Arizona, where he has been completing another book on the effects of colonialism on indigenous peoples and their potentials to reverse its most damaging effects through maintaining cultural continuity.

Dissertation Title
The Privatization of Mental Health: Political and Ideological Influences in Psychiatric Care in the United States and Great Britain 1979-1989
Entry Year