For at least part of the meal we wore pilgrim hats (made of black card, silver duct tape and cut-out paper plates -- long live the internet) and a colorful feathery headdress (green and orange construction paper), made by yours truly. The story we told was of silly black-hatted English folk who showed up in faraway America unprepared and starved - until a nice Native American offered them a delicious feast. (Since my sister was the provider of the feast, she got to wear the feathers, despite repeated entreaties from my nephew. I won't describe the trauma for him of his younger brother's first birthday this morning - the first time there's ever been present-giving where he received nothing!) And so we give thanks for delicious food, and hospitality, and friends, and family...
Not bad under the circumstances, I think... it's not an easy story to export, though I'm not sure it would have been much easier in the US!
What might be nice for future years would be integrating something from the first contact of the British Fleet and the Aborigines around what would become Sydney. As Inga Clendinnen (remember her?) describes in her lovely book Dancing with Strangers, the first thing that happened after the initial awkwardness as the Brits left their ships was that someone started singing a song and dancing to it. One of the Aborigines joined in, and soon everyone was dancing together, songs and dances native and English - there's a watercolor painted by one of the crew to prove it! (You can see part of it at the bottom of the cover picture.) Imagine if that were taught in schools! It's an argument for teaching dance, too!
