Twitter Play-by-Play of the Champlain on the Anishinabe-Aki Colloquium: Day One

On By lamarkewicz

At the Champlain on the Anishinabe-Aki Colloquium at Carleton University this week, there were quite a few of us glued to our various electronic devices. No, we weren’t rudely texting while the panelists were speaking (well, at least I wasn’t); we were projecting their words to the Twitterverse. We were retweeted and queried by other Twitterhistorians and museums alike, adding another layer of conversation to the conference.

This also may amount to more of a Twitter play-by-play of the colloquium’s proceedings, not only the most popular and witty of the tweets. While most but not all of the tweeting is in English, many of the presenters and audience questions were using French. I can just more easily wrestle my thoughts and summaries of events into 140 characters in English.

(Fair warning: I may be biased in favour of my own tweets, but there were so many other witty people tweeting I am sure that there will be plenty of variety! Most of these come from the official conference hashtag at #cuchamplain.)

The “Anishinabe-Aki” of course means “Anishinabe Land”. “Algonquin” is a linguistic group and lacks specificity and cultural relevance.

(I didn’t – both because I was nervous compared to all of these articulate folks making brilliant remarks and because there were so many questions and so little time!)

(Some anglophone audience members had been struggling a little bit with face-paced French with non-Québécois accents.)

(This light show will come up again later.)

(Up to this point, this assertion is very much true; all of the tweeters are students at Carleton University, even the CCPH official feed.)

(She in fact was telling a story about her own child’s school that was going to have an “Amérindien” year, culminating in a costume party. She was horrified.)

(Which is even more clear when you know that it’s spelled “Brasil” in French.)

Then Chief Kirby Whiteduck and Chief Gilbert Whiteduck took the floor.

(The definitions of which were questioned by the audience; the official definition of genocide held by the UN was quoted via the miracles of modern technology and it was determined that yes, by the UN’s standards, a genocide had been committed against the Anishinabeg people.) Many of the conference attendees then went to the Museum of Civilization for a look at the small Champlain exhibit and to eat a delicious dinner. After that, many walked across the bridge to either the official light show at the Champlain statue on Nepean Point or the counter light show in Major’s Hill Park.

For more information on the context behind the light show and a few short videos (of terrible quality, I apologize) of the event, see my previous blog post.

The tweets continue for day two of the colloquium….

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One thought on “Twitter Play-by-Play of the Champlain on the Anishinabe-Aki Colloquium: Day One”

  1. Pingback: Twitter Play-by-Play of the Champlain on the Anishinabe-Aki Colloquium: Day Two | History Research Shenanigans

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