AC_1965_Web

27 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z D A V I S DAVIS SHELTON [SANDY] THEN AND NOW 4 B.S. Sociology and Anthropology 4 Ph.D., Anthropology, Harvard FAMI LY 4 Wife, Mary Clare Gubbins 4 Son, Peter 4 Daughter, Rebecca COLLECTED BY BERNIE GUYER AND EDITED FROM THE ANTIOCH ALUMNI DIRECTORY ENTRY, WRITTEN IN LARGE PART BY HIS SON, PETER DAVIS, 2011 S H E L T O N H . D A V I S —“Sandy” to most of us—an activist anthropolo- gist and indigenous rights advocate, died May 27, 2010, of lymphoma. He was 67. Sandy was born in Pittsburgh, Penn., in 1942. He graduated from Antioch in 1965 and received a doc- torate in anthropology from Harvard University in 1970 after two years of field work in Santa Eulalia, a Mayan community in the highlands of Guatemala. He taught at Harvard, creat- ing their first course on Native Americans in the United States. In 1973 he founded Indigena, Inc., in Berkeley, Calif., the first documenta- tion center in the United States on indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere, publishing the first English-language newsletter on Indian peoples of the Americas. In 1975, he founded the Anthropology Resource Center, a public interest research organization devoted to analysis of the effects of development policies on indigenous peoples and the environment in the Amazon and western United States. He and ARC are cited today as one of the founding advocates and ex- emplifiers of “public interest an- thropology”—anthropology that, in Davis’words,“grows out of the dem- ocratic traditions of citizen activ- ism” and holds that “the role of the intellectual is to work with citizens in promoting fundamental change.” During his time at ARC, Davis wrote Victims of the Miracle , published by Cambridge University Press in 1978, the first account in depth by an an- thropologist of the social and envi- ronmental impact—and human cost to the indigenous Indians—of the Amazon development program of the 1970s. Victims , a seminal work in cultural anthropology, is widely cited to this day, and is still used in anthropology classes. He worked at the World Bank from 1987 to 2004, where he—in the words of his co-workers—was one of indigenous peoples’“staunch- est advocates” from inside the Bank and where he spent his time taking on “the struggle for minority rights —territorial rights, linguistic rights, cultural rights—as his professional mission.” Davis firmly believed that the “best qualified experts” on what a community needs for development are the community members them- selves, and thus worked actively to ensure that the Bank included the poor and indigenous in the develop- ment decision-making process. As a result of his work “mainstreaming” social issues into Bank policy, social impact assessments and social inclu- sion of indigenous peoples during Bank project preparation became the norm. His colleagues write that he was an“indefatigable defender of indigenous peoples’ rights and an unshakable optimist” and that “one could solidly count on Sandy when- ever a battle for ‘Putting People First’ in development had to be car- ried out inside the Bank, or outside.” Davis taught courses on sustainable development, poverty reduction and social inclusion in Latin America at Georgetown University from 1992 to 2008 in the Center for Latin American Studies. Davis lived the past 25 years in Falls Church,Va.,attending rec sports games, George Mason High School events, and sitting on the English as a Second Language Advisory Committee for Falls Church City Public Schools for eight years. He is remembered around Falls Church as a kind and humble man, ready with a smile and words of encouragement and gratitude. He is survived by his wife, Mary Clare Gubbins of Falls Church, his daughter, Rebecca, of Brooklyn, N.Y., his son, Peter, and his brother,