Dancing With The Historians

Since I got to Vancouver I’ve spent most of my time hanging out with a bunch of first nations brothas and sistas. Great people, great times, lots and lots of laughter. Last night we went to a seafood restaurant for kai, awesome, my first feed of kaimoana since I left NZ, and well-deserved by all of us, but especially Rob, Mary Jane and Susan whose panel discussion about indigenous historians in history rocked the ivory tower. Yes, it was a great day, indeed, to be indigenous (to mis-quote Sherman Alexie).

It’s been a good conference overall, and I’ve enjoyed a number of the papers. The highlight, though, has to have been the dance. We've been having this running joke about historians with a capital H (trained in history), and historians with a lower-case 'h' (trained in other disciplines but doing history). When we arrived late for the dance, after missing the pre-dance formalities, we decided that some of the dancing historians seemed to have a little bit of rhthym, and thought that maybe those ones were part sociologist or political scientist (or maybe had a great-great grandmother who was one-sixteenth Cree). But when they crowded on the floor for Walk Like An Egyptian and started walking/dancing like Egyptians we knew they were Historians all right.

Oh, those Historians, they're so cute when they dance, aren't they?

Short blog today, thought I'd give you plenty of time to contemplate the dancing historians. It was far too funny. Today a carload of us are off to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, and a ferry ride away on Vancouver Island. Tomorrow I fly to Ottawa and then drive (with Danielle) to the Six Nations Reservation for the weekend. Oh, yes, I can see myself getting behind in my work as we speak – I’ve still got two conference presentations to write. I must be too tired to get nervous about it.