Two upcoming events in Vancouver and Victoria

1936 Field Trip by the Vancouver Natural History Society to Musqueam. Source: Vancouver Public Library. VPL Accession Number: 19483

In Vancouver this Sunday, September 19 at 1.00 there is a guided walk of the Ancient Salmon Stream and Musqueam Village, starting at Jericho Beach (details here) with Victor Guerin, “a cultural/linguistic consultant and historian, a member of the Musqueam First Nation and a speaker of the Musqueam dialect of the Central Coast Salish language Halkomelem. He has been learning about his people’s culture and history his entire life, including some 16 years of consultation and documentation with family elders and 4 years formal training in the Musqueam language with linguistic analysts at UBC.”

This talk/walk is one in a series from the False Creek Watershed Society, most of which look like they hold promise for an interesting conversation between historical ecology, traditional knowledge, and landscape development.  It would be good to see connections built or strengthened between restoration groups and archaeologists, who share many of the same values.  You can see the other talks and walks they sponsor here – two of them are actually today, Saturday September 18th.  OK, go to those as well!

The other upcoming event is the  Archaeology Society of B.C. monthly public lecture in Victoria, which is on Tuesday 21 September.  This month’s speaker is Grant Keddie from the Royal B.C. Museum.

Grant Keddie with some "reconstructed" cairns in Beacon Hill Park. Source: beaconhillparkhistory.org

“Spindle Whorls, Stinging Nettle and Fireweed”

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of Ethnological collections and how they relate to the archaeological record. What do we know about the archaeology of tools used in the processing of plant fibers that appear in the Ethnographic record? Grant will talk about various tools and some of his experiments in plant processing.

Grant Keddie has worked as a Curator of Archaeology at the Royal British Columbia Museum for the last 38 years. He has a broad interest in the history of First Nations cultures of British Columbia, as well as the early history of European and Asiatic cultures in B.C.

The talk is at 7:30 pm on Tuesday at the Pacific Forestry Centre, 506 West Burnside Road (map).  For information, phone  250-384-6059, or e-mail asbcvictoria@gmail.com , the ASBC-Victoria website is here.  It is free and open to the public.  I don’t think I will be making this one but encourage everyone to go and download a bit of Grant Keddie!