The theme for this year’s conference, “On the Edge of the Known World,” is a phrase that the late Chief Don Ivy of the Coquille Indian Tribe used when describing the place of the Ko-Kwel people, both on the land and in history. For settlers, southern Oregon was the periphery, existing just outside the growing colonial sphere of the American empire until the forced removal of the Ko-Kwel and their neighbors to the Coast Reservation in the mid-1850s. For anthropologists, the Ko-Kwel people and their cultural history also occupied the margins, beyond the limits of the known world of culture areas and chronologies—a so-called “cultural black hole.”

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For the Ko-Kwel and their ancestors, this place on the edge—the point where the river mixes with the sea, where prairies meet the forest, where water meets the land—is at the center of the world. Here, at the western end of the continent and at the boundaries of diverse geological, ecological, and cultural regions, the edge is not a cliff. It is an intersection. A meeting point. A crossroads. It is a place to reflect on what we know, what we don’t know, and where we want to go next. It is in that spirit that we invite you to join us “On the Edge of the Known World,” for the 80th Northwest Anthropological Conference in Coos Bay, Oregon!