On October 9, 2020, the promising young anthropologist, activist, and medical doctor, Sam Dubal, set off to hike the Mother Mountain Loop at the northwest corner of Mount Rainier National Park, and never returned.
In the immediate wake of his disappearance, a handful of his many beloved friends and colleagues presented the following reflections for the American Anthropological Association’s “Raising Our Voices” (2020) virtual meeting, filling a slot which would have been taken by Sam to discuss his provocative Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army (2018).
The entries that follow are some of those submissions, written in the immediate wake of Sam’s disappearance. They engage both his life and his book and some of the dimensions of our respective relationships with him that are difficult to disentangle from any sort of scholarly engagement. For those who knew Sam, we hope it is comforting. For those who did not, we hope it may serve as an invitation to the kind of kinship in discomfort that Sam believed was necessary as a condition for collective healing.
-Vincanne Adams, Michael D’Arcy, Jason J. Price, & Melina Salvador
(Memorial Forum Editors)