I hope this message finds you all well and looking forward to a restful holiday season, even if it will be quieter than originally planned.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s patience, flexibility and resilience. Omicron is going to demand those things of us again as we move into 2022 and I wish you all strength and hope as we continue to navigate these uncertain times. The virus has also highlighted many inequities in our society and provided a space for reflection on the way we practice archaeology in Canada, and how we might begin to make our discipline more diverse and equitable. I’d like to share some updates about our work along these lines, and other CAA news. The board and our committees have been very busy behind the scenes and I’m so grateful to our many wonderful volunteers who keep these initiatives moving forward.

Scholarships. We are in the process of developing eligibility criteria, an application form and evaluation criteria for two new Equity and Diversity scholarships. We hope to finalize the details and launch the awards this spring. If you’d like to donate to help build the scholarship endowment, just follow the link on our website. So far we’ve raised almost $15,000 of our $50,000 goal. 

Unmarked Graves Working Group. The Working Group, chaired by Kisha Supernant, has developed a series of resources providing information for Indigenous Communities about different near-surface geophysical techniques that could be useful in the search for unmarked graves associated with former Indian Residential Schools (IRS). In the new year, we will begin work on a GPR training program to build capacity for Indigenous communities to conduct their own GPR surveys. We are grateful to generous support from the University of Western Ontario that has allowed us to hire Sarah Hazell as a project manager to oversee the development of the training program. Members of the Working Group meet monthly with representatives from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and Crown Indigenous Relations Canada to share information. The CAA is also leading a coalition of national associations with expertise relevant to missing children investigations at IRS sites. See the coalition’s recent joint statement HERE. A huge thank-you to everyone involved in this difficult and important work.

Ethics Review. The Ethics Review Committee’s draft of the Revised CAA Principles of Ethical Conduct is available on the CAA website. Thanks to all of you who provided comments on the draft through the survey or via email. The Committee will meet in January to address your feedback. Until then, you can still send comments to the committee chairs, Gary Warrick (gwarrick@wlu.ca) and Eldon Yellowhorn (eldon_yellowhorn@sfu.ca) via email.

2022 Conference in Edmonton. The long-awaited Edmonton conference (originally scheduled for 2020) will finally happen at the end of April 2022. Hurray! The organizing committee is planning for a hybrid conference – with options for virtual and in-person participation. If needed, plans may shift in response to changes in public health guidelines. It will be jointly hosted by the Archaeological Society of Alberta. The latest conference information is HERE.

Canadian Journal of Archaeology. The journal is going digital-only starting in 2022. When it comes time to renew your membership, you will see that there is no longer a print membership option and all members will pay the Green Membership fees going forward. We are working towards having CJA indexed on Web of Science and will soon submit our application to the Emerging Sources Citation Index. This will greatly increase the visibility of CJA articles and help to broaden the journal’s audience.

We’re looking for a new CJA copy editor. The position is paid and is a wonderful opportunity for a graduate student with some professional copy-editing experience. Contact CJA editor John Creese for details or to apply: cjaeditor@canadianarchaeology.com.

Call for Award Nominations. We invite nominations for the 2021 CAA awards. You can find award criteria and instructions on how to submit a nomination here: https://canadianarchaeology.com/caa/about/awards. We will announce the award winners at the 2021 virtual conference and celebrate the awards in Edmonton in 2022.

Submission deadlines are as follows:

• Feb 15, 2022: Smith Wintemberg Award
• March 15, 2022: Margaret and James F. Pendergast Award, Public Communications Award, Roscoe Wilmeth Award for Service
• June 15, 2022: Daniel Weetaluktuk Awards – for Undergraduate Student paper and Graduate Student Research paper

Volunteer Opportunities. CAA needs you! We are looking for people to fill the following roles:

• CJA book review editor. Please contact CJA editor John Creese if you have questions about what’s involved or want to stick up your hand: cjaeditor@canadianarchaeology.com  
• Indigenous Issues Committee, member. (Ideally, we are looking for an Indigenous archaeologist to fill this role, but we are also open to non-Indigenous archaeologists with strong track records of collaboration with and advocacy for Indigenous communities.) Email me at president@canadianarchaeology.com if you’re interested.

I look forward to connecting with many of you, one way or another, during the spring conference. Please get in touch if you ever have questions, concerns, or suggestions about anything CAA-related. I’m always happy to hear from you: president@canadianarchaeology.com.
The very best of the season to you all. Take good care.

Lisa Hodgetts, CAA president