Wolverine & Associates Inc.
is a small consulting firm based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, owned and
operated by consulting anthropologist, Peter Armitage (M.A., Memorial
University, 1986). The firm provides anthropological research services related
to Canadian indigenous peoples.
Armitage has worked among indigenous peoples in Labrador, northern Quebec and Ontario, the Western Arctic, and New Brunswick since the early 1980s as a graduate student, researcher and consultant on land rights/claims negotiations, historic and cultural resources, material culture, use and occupancy research, local environmental knowledge (LEK/TEK), and environmental impact assessment.
His preference is to contract directly to indigenous governments and other organizations managed or controlled by indigenous people. However, he has contracted to museums and federal and provincial government departments at the request of indigenous governments and often under the terms of agreements between these departments and indigenous governments. He has also contracted to co-management bodies established under the terms of a land claims agreement.
Depending on the nature of the assignment, Armitage works in association with consulting and university-based social scientists (e.g. anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists, sociologists, geographers, historians, demographers, criminologists), community facilitators, health specialists, biologists, foresters, and engineers. In most cases, his non-university-based associates are independent researchers like himself; with low overhead and a history of providing quality, ethical research services to indigenous peoples.
In his work with indigenous communities, Armitage commits to:
high research and ethics standards;
best practices such as those described by Terry Tobias in Living Proof: the Essential Data-collection Guide for Indigenous Use-and-Occupancy Map Surveys (2009, Vancouver: Ecotrust Canada and Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs);
conduct research in a manner consistent with the principles and best practices presented in Ethical Principles for the Conduct of Research in the North by the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (2003) and the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (2022).
abide by ethics protocols established by representative indigenous governments;
respect indigenous Intellectual Property rights. Confidentiality and Intellectual Property rights provisions are embedded in contracts signed by Wolverine & Associates Inc.;
assist indigenous peoples with local capacity building and knowledge transfer whenever possible.
Armitage is a member of the Canadian Anthropology Society.
Peter Armitage
Wolverine & Associates Inc.
PO Box 1441, Stn.C
St. John's, Newfoundland, A1C 5N8
tel. (709) 685-5328
e-mail: armitage_peter at bellaliant dot net
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