Encounters in many fields

This past week as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Interactive Media and Performance, I attended the Canadian Society for Traditional Music annual conference in Montreal - a conference which, in June 2010, will come to the University of Regina (click here to see the Call for Papers)! In addition to meeting with Canada Research Chair in Interactive Media and Performance, Dr. Charity Marsh to catch up on some administrative business, and hearing her presentation on her work on Aboriginal hip hop in the IMP labs - I heard papers on ethnomusicology, traditional and children's musics, and chatted with colleagues about their research and new developments in their programs. I was also invited to give guest lectures, workshops and presentations at other universities. Conferences are wonderful ways to connect with other scholars - which, for ethnomusicologists, seems especially important given the fact that there is most often only one ethnomusicologist at a given institution. I am pleased that, through the support of Interactive Media and Performance at U Regina (reimbursement for a popular music conference I attended in Liverpool, UK this past summer recently came through), I was able to attend and participate in the CSTM conference.

Before I left for Montreal, I touched based with a research participant who was convalescing over the summer. I was relieved and gladdened to hear he is on the mend. I was also cheered that he was interested in talking about continuing our work together in the future.

This week, I met with Dr. Vic Satzewich, a sociologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, who has published a fair amount on race and ethnicity in Canada. He pointed out that my research is significant in that it addresses a major empirical gap in the literature - neither he nor I can think of any scholarship that addresses relations between Aboriginal people and Ukrainian settler and their descendants in Canada. We discussed the fact that this particular hybridity is not something that has come up in any previous scholarship, as regards histories or understandings of Metis. In western Canada especially, Metis tend to be associated with stories of the Red River Valley and relations with French and Scottish, but not other European groups. I was grateful that he took time to talk with me, and for helping me think about ways in which I might explore this topic further.

I remember that, when I began to talk with others - scholars, research participants and community members more broadly - about this research topic a couple of years ago, I would be met with initial surprise at their hearing that there actually were relations between Aboriginal people and Ukrainian settlers on the prairies. Quickly, though, the realization dawned on people that there must have been many interactions and encounters, since these groups of people would have been living in close contact, especially in rural regions of the prairies. Indeed, I am finding more and more evidence all the time of encounters and relations between Aboriginal people and Ukrainian settlers on the prairies during the early 1900s - and in many of the stories Ukrainian immigrants benefit from the hospitality, care and knowledge shared with them by their Aboriginal neighbours. I have also met with smiles of recognition - from people who then speak to me about “growing up Oji-Ukrainian” or in families of some mix of Aboriginal and Ukrainian ancestry. I hope that this internet site might offer more such opportunities for me to interact with others who might be able to share with me similar stories.