Dance Heritage Think Tank on Feb 21st

On Saturday, Feb 21st, HFNL, MMaP and Neighbourhood Dance Works will host an open session for dance enthusiasts to meet and discuss the future of the tradition of dance in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The event will be an introductory platform for members of the dance community to consider our various dance heritages and identify what that means. The main objective is to serve as an information sharing and gathering process.

The session would be guided by a series of questions intended to generate discussion and pinpoint common themes and trends. We will discuss issues of “dance preservation” and what, why, who, and how we think about local dance history and traditions.

The outcome would be to consider:

a) if this a topic of interest to community members, and

b) is so, what future initiatives could be taken to address dance preservation in the province.

The event will take place from 1-4 at the MMaP gallery, Arts and Culture Centre. Stay tuned for more information, or email ich@heritagefoundation.ca

Happy Valley-Goose Bay ICH Workshop with the Labrador Metis Nation

Photo: Labrador Metis Nation President Chris Montague delivering salmon to elders in Lake Melville.

FREE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE WORKSHOP

The Labrador Metis Nation will be offering a FREE Intangible Cultural Heritage Workshop on Tuesday, January 27, 2009. This workshop will be lead by Martha MacDonald of the Labrador Institute and Dale Jarvis of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. The workshop will take place at the Labrador Metis Nation Board Room at 370 Hamilton River Road.

There is a limit of TEN seats available. Contact Jennifer Butler to reserve your seat.

Date: 27-Jan-09
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm
Place: 370 Hamilton River Road (LMN Office)
Contact: Jennifer Butler, jbutler@labradormetis.ca; 709-896-0592

Radio Noon ICH Podcast

Photo: Ramona Deering, CBC Radio Noon host (left) and Sheila Downer, SmartLabrador (right).

On Friday, January 16th, CBC Radio Noon in St. John's hosted a phone-in Crosstalk on the theme of intangible cultural heritage, with guests Sheila Downer of SmartLabrador and yours truly, Dale Jarvis. Interested listeners called in on topics ranging from boat and kayak building to traditional dancing and community oral history projects.

Ramona started off the show with an audio clip from the SmartLabrador community ICH project, with a local man reciting the points of the compass. It prompted this email from listener Dawn Mesh:

"Further to the gentleman reciting the compass.......my uncle who was from Keels, Bonavista Bay and who died in 2007 at 82 years of age, could also recite this. He was not a fisherman nor was he a person given to recitation. I thought he had learned this at school.....maybe in the Royal Readers?"

If you have any information on the compass recitation, you can post a comment here, or email Dale Jarvis at ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

Download the Radio Noon ICH podcast here in MP3 format.

Fyke Nets and Folklife

Photo: Mr Freeman Upshall, Placentia, showing the wing of a fyke net used for the eel fishery, with a speedboat he made in the background.

I was in Placentia today for a meeting at the Avalon Gateway Regional Economic Development office, about the upcoming Living RICH (Rural Intangible Cultural Heritage) Symposium, to be held heritage week, the third week of February. After the meeting, Margie Hatfield, Heritage & Tourism Director with the Town of Placentia, took me over and introduced me to Mr Freeman Upshall, local tradition bearer and jack-of-all-trades. Mr Upshall and I had a cup of tea and a long chat that ranged from eel fishing to boat building to memories of the whale fishery.

Stay tuned to this blog for more on the Living RICH Symposium and on Mr Upshall!

For those of you interested (there must be other etymology nerds out there) "fyke" is derived from the Dutch fuik, and means "a long bag net kept open by hoops" according to Merriam-Webster, and you can see a picture of one in action here.

Boatbuilding thesis added to Memorial's Digital Archive Initiative

This photo of a herring boat from Trout River, Newfoundland, is taken from Paul Dwyer's Folklore MA Thesis: "The Design, Construction and Use of the Bay of Islands Dory: A Study in Tradition and Culture." The thesis is an examination of dory building the Bay of Islands in Western Newfoundland, looking at the issues of design, construction and use. Written in 2000, the thesis is now hosted online ast part of the thesis digitization project of Memorial University's Digital Archive Initiative (DAI). From books and maps to photographs, periodicals, video and audio, the DAI hosts a variety of collections which together reinforce the importance, past and present, of Newfoundland and Labrador's history and culture.

Other Folklore theses digitized to date include:

Continuation and acculturation: a study of foodways of three Chinese immigrant families in St. John's, Newfoundland
by Jianxiang Liu

Everyday objects as mediators of self: a material culture study of work, home and community in the pulp and paper town of Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland and Labrador
by Jane Burns

Skill and status: traditional expertise within a rural Canadian family
by Laurel Doucette

Architectural change and architectural meaning in Moravian Labrador
by Dale Gilbert Jarvis

ICH on Radio Noon Crosstalk

This Friday, January 16th, tune in to CBC Radio Noon Crosstalk with host Ramona Dearing and guests, yours truly (Dale Jarvis) and Sheila Downer. Sheila Downer is with Smart Labrador, who are running an ICH project on the Labrador Straits

You can listen online at http://www.cbc.ca/radionoonnl/ or phone the RADIO NOON'S CROSSTALK NUMBER: 722-7111 in the St. John's area, 1-800-563-8255 Toll Free Long Distance across North America

Show starts at 1 pm, Newfoundland time, 11:30 am EST

I'm looking for people to phone in to nominate a local tradition, custom, or element of community culture that you think is worth celebrating and saving! What traditional activity in your town do you think should be preserved? Is there an elder or tradition bearer in your area that you think deserves recognition?

ICH Update for January 2009

The Christmas tree will soon be nothing but mulch, the mummers are resting for another year, the wren is buried, and we are already running to keep up with everything that is happening in the province with intangible cultural heritage for 2009. In this issue of the ICH Update, we have a panel on fieldwork ethics, Innu place names online, a revitalization of drum dancing in Makkovik, and an ongoing oral history project in Placentia. Plus a job posting for youth looking for work in the multiculturalism sector in St John's!

You can download the full newsletter in pdf format here.

Happy New Year!

"Everybody has a story to tell" - article by Jonathan Russell

A group of women in the Labrador Straits are collecting stories, interviews and traditional skills to preserve local history. Northern Pen writer Jonathan Russell wrote up this report, send to me by workshop leader Helen Woodrow.

See the full article at:
http://www.heritagefoundation.ca/media/2360/oralhistory.pdf