In the 1960s, as a graduate student at Oxford, Brody was influenced by Muiris Ó Súilleabháin's book Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years a-Growing), and worked as an anthropologist in Ireland.
[7] He learned two dialects of Inuktitut, North Baffin and South Hudson Bay, and wrote The People's Land, Inuit and Whites in the Eastern Arctic.
This is a book that looks at how colonial relations, through the history of the fur trade, church missions and the Canadian government, have shaped the social and psychological circumstances of the far north.
In the course of his work with the Northern Science Research Group, Brody also developed an innovative program that aimed to give new levels of support for families who wanted to live on the land.
Brody was also one of those who in the mid-1970s first urged within the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs the idea of the separation of the Canadian north into two indigenous jurisdictions, with that of the east becoming an Inuit political territory.
[9] In 1977, Brody was a witness to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, giving evidence on the nature of northern development, alcohol abuse and Inuit languages.
This account of anthropological research and cultural mapping with a hunting community, and especially the laying of frontier development onto the ways Dunne-za and Cree see and understand their territories, became a classic of indigenous studies.
[7][12] Brody worked with Justice Berger again in 1991–1992 as a member of the World Bank's Morse Commission, which had the job of assessing implications of the Sardar Sarovar Dam, a vast hydro and irrigation project in western India.
[13] His role in public inquiries and assessment of the impact of large scale developments on indigenous communities continued when he became Chairman of the Snake River Independent Review.
[19] Canadian philosopher George Woodcock described Maps and Dreams (1981) as "an impressive attempt to dispel popular errors about peoples whom anthropologists used condescendingly to call 'primitive hunters'.
Brody is also seeking to prove that hunting economies can continue to be viable even in modern North America, and that the way of life associated with them is worth preserving.
[21] A review in the New York Times termed it " an informed, passionate and enlightening volume…that adds new dimensions to our understanding of the diversity of human life.” [22] Stephen Osborne writing in Geist described it as "a literary act: a work of deep imagination.
These include the award-winning Hunters And Bombers, a film that follows the Innu resistance to low level flying in Labrador from CFB Goose Bay.
[27] His film The Washing of Tears made with the Mowachaht-Muchalaht people of Gold River, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is an exploration of how one community looked to their fractured heritage to deal with extremes of dispossession and grief.
[29] Brody's films for British television include England's Henry Moore, a project that was conceived by writer and political commentator Anthony Barnett.