Who Talks, Who Listens?: Indigenous Peoples and the Dublin Seminar

Abstract The genesis of the Dublin Seminar as a gathering place for people with intense curiosity about specific things (a/k/a “shameless eclecticism”), attracted a loyal audience from its inception. This is evident from the effort by the past and present members of the Board of Trustees to keep the Dublin Seminar going, even after the death of its mainstay, Peter Benes. It is also evident from the loyalty of people such as my cousin Elna Headberg, a third-grade teacher from Marlborough, Massachusetts with a keen interest in genealogy and local history, including gravestones, who attended faithfully for over four decades.1 I presented my first paper at the 1989 Dublin Seminar “New England/New France,” while I was a first-year graduate student in the American and New England Studies Program at Boston University.2 This experience was formative in many ways, perhaps most importantly for the blend of academic rigor and welcome that made me think, “Ah! This is the life for me.”