I'd personally never heard of him, but i have read a lot of Yawney's research & writing as she went to McGill here in Montreal. I had no idea she had passed...
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Dr. Jake Homiak, the curator of “Discovering Rastafari!,” is a cultural anthropologist who has worked extensively with members of the Rastafari Movement over the past 26 years, particularly the House of Nyahbinghi and the Ethiopian African Black International Congress. This exhibit project was originally conceived and initiated with a his colleague and research partner, the late Dr. Carole Yawney, an anthropologist from York University in Toronto, Canada, who had a close 35-year association with Ras Mortimo Planno. The work of these two individuals has not only involved fieldwork in Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean, England, South Africa, Panama, the United States and Ethiopia but various forms of advocacy for Rastafari communities in Jamaica, the United States and Canada. “Discovering Rastafari!” is slated to open in the African Voices Hall of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. sometime in 2007.

During 1980-81, Homiak lived in Jamaica and did fieldwork with two of the principal Rastafari mansions, the Ethiopian African Black International Congress and the House of Nyahbinghi. While living in Bull Bay, St. Thomas during this time, Jake traveled to venues across Jamaica to attend Nyahbinghi celebrations held in 1980. His visits to Jamaica continued throughout the 1980s and culminated in advocacy for two delegations of Nyahbinghi Elders that traveled to the Eastern United States in 1988 and 1989. These delegations were a direct reaction to a flood of media reports during the mid-1980s that routinely linked Rastafari to violent and lawless “Jamaican posses” operating in the metropoles of the U.S. In response to this misrepresentation, members of the Washington, D.C. Rastafari community approached Dr. Homiak to help them organize an appropriate response. This involved planning and securing funding for a series of public programs that would bring Nyahbinghi Elders to the U.S. to educate the public about the true nature of the movement and its culture. Through his Smithsonian contacts, Jake assisted the community in securing visas for the Elders and in organizing institutional venues for these stalwarts of the faith. Over the intervening years, Dr. Homiak has periodically been called upon to testify in court proceedings on behalf of Rastafari defendants, including incarcerated members of the movement who seek to have their cultural and spiritual practices recognized by the state.

Jake Homiak received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1985 and is currently the Director of the Anthropology Collection & Archives Program at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland. He has general oversight for the Department of Anthropology’s nearly two and a half million cultural artifacts and archaeological specimens as well as the manuscript, photographic, and film holdings of its National Anthropological Archives and the Human Studies Film Archives. Homiak coordinates access and outreach to a broad range of scholars and Native visitors who use these resources for academic research, publication, exhibition, and heritage research.