Michael I. Asch

Michael I. Asch

Michael I. Asch, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist (b at New York City, NY 9 April 1943). A graduate of Columbia University, he joined the University of Alberta in 1971. An internationally recognized speaker, author and educator, Asch is well known for his Home and Native Land (1984) and Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada (1997). Over the past 3 decades he has given expert witness testimony at numerous public judicial inquiries, including the 1976 Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry (the Berger Commission) and Regina vs. Dick (a 1981 BC aboriginal hunting and fishing case). He was senior research associate with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1993-94. Expertise in anthropological kinship studies and music is reflected in his Kinship and the Drum Dance (1988). In 1996 and 1997 he served as judge in the JUNO AWARDS (World Music category), and has been Chair of the Advisory Board of Smithsonian/Folkway Records since 1989. Folkway Records, founded by Michael's father Moses Asch, was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in 1986.