Why hide your doctoral thesis?

The thesis "Les Cuivas" that Bernard Arcand defended in 1971 at the University of Cambridge, England, is unique in that, contrary to common practice, it was not published during the author's lifetime.

Bernard had it sealed up in Cambridge," explains Professor Sylvie Poirier of the Department of Anthropology. He feared that people with power, such as missionaries in search of souls to convert or companies in search of natural resources to exploit, would appropriate his research and dispossess the Cuivas of their way of life and territory, their cosmology, their identity - in a word, their humanity.

It was a very strong political and ethical position. It was also a courageous one, as pressure from the academic research community demanded that we publish our thesis so that the quality of our research could be seen. In the Department, my colleagues and I understood Bernard's gesture very well."

For Sylvie Poirier, the Cuivas of yesteryear represented an extraordinary example of freedom. "We imagined them on the edge of survival, whereas they were at the beginning of abundance," she explains. They spent several hours a day in their hammocks, with the larder nearby!"

In dialogue with nature, these people possessed an extraordinary knowledge of their living environment. In her view, modern societies would benefit from drawing inspiration from the values that formed the basis of the Cuivas' social functioning, such as the absence of competition, sharing and egalitarian gender relations.

For the full article: À la rencontre des Cuivas, by Yvon Larose

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