The Association of Borderlands Studies held its annual conference this year in Houston, Texas, between the 12th and 14th of April. While a number of researchers associated with our Global COE program attended, the conference also saw the screening of the “Unknown Tales of the Southern Borders” DVD, produced by our Global COE Program in association with HBC Flex. Despite being on the last day, the session was attended by the association’s chairperson-elect, Christine Brenner, and her deputy Victor Konrad, as well as such illustrious borderland’s scholars as Martin van der Velde, Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Tony Payan, James Scott, Ilkka Liikanen and Kimberly Collins, who deliberated over the film with its creator, IWASHITA Akihiro, and with Paul Richardson, who had cooperated on the production of the English version. The film left quite an impression on those in attendance, and appears set to be used as teaching material in the future, in Canada, the USA, Finland, the Netherlands, and so on. Having begun these film sessions at last year’s ABS conference in Salt Lake City with the showing of “Unknown Tales of the Northern Borders: Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands”, it is planned that the “Indigenous Peoples and Borders” DVD will be shown at next year’s Denver Conference.

Akihiro Iwashita