So I did, in fact, go to the Burke Museum today, as I'd said I was going to. Not the most exciting place I've ever been. To be fair, it's a small University-based museum, so it's not like I should have expected a lot.
There were three exhibits. Headlining the place was a travelling exhibit from the Smithsonian on the Burgess Shale. Nice and all, but the Cambrian Period isn't really my cup of tea. Something about the lack of people, I guess.
Second was the fairly de rigueur paleontology exhibit. Still no people, but dinosaurs are cool. The exhibit was well-designed, too. I mean, spatially speaking. Good foot-flow and good use of area to give you a real sense of size of the fossils. Not extensive, of course, but well done.
Last was the "People's of the Pacific" which was a short sketch on each of the (you guessed it) Peoples of the Pacific. The floor design here didn't have as good a flow as the paleontology exhibit, but that's ok. It was a pretty rought sketch, a good general introduction and I learned some really cool stuff about the islanders of the South Pacific, and that in turn gave me general story fodder (though I've nowhere to use it yet, I don't think), so cool!
Unfortunately, I think a lot of the exhibit was a little too preachy. You know the sort. "Unfortunately much of the rich language and traditions of these people was destroyed by the evil white man who came in and spread Christianity and plague everywhere." Yes, I get it. My pigmentary forebears were a bunch of awful fucks. Not that I don't think it's worthwhile to acknowledge the places where explorers, colonists and imperialists wreaked wholesale destruction upon a culture. It absolutely is. Learning from history and all. But when you're dealing with such a finite amount of space and there is so much about these peoples that you can say, I'd rather you save the space for the fun stuff instead of harping on the evil white man three or four times.
It was a worthwhile trip (especially because I got in for free!), but not a place that you can really spend more than an hour or two in. Not so much a place to bring a date or really go back to, though.