Thirty-five years ago, near one hundred people crowded into a 1990 AAA Annual Meeting room in New Orelans to demand the creation of a new section that would recognize the existence of an anthropology of North America. Angry and frustrated that their ethnographic research here “at home” was deemed outside the purview of anthropology, limiting their access to grants, publication opportunities, jobs, and professional recognition, they began to organize for change.

In 2025, facing challenges both familiar and distinct, a new generation of anthropologists seeks to learn from the strategic efforts of SANA’s past. How have SANA and its sister “insurgent sections” of the AAA shifted the intellectual and political landscape of the association, and of the discipline more broadly? What does SANA’s legacy mean for our next steps and for the future of critical insurgent anthropologies?

In 2025, in celebration of SANA’s 35th anniversary, we’ve begun efforts to create an archive of SANA’s history as a section of the American Anthropological Association. This included roundtables at our Spring Meeting in Portland and at the AAA Annual Meeting in New Orleans, where we brought together longtime SANA founders and builders to build a collective oral history. We’ve also begun collecting archival materials. If you’re interested in joining this effort–conducting oral histories, gathering materials, or writing proposals to secure funding, please reach out!