Every December the Steering Committee of Landscapes of Injustice meets to discuss progress and to make plans. We’ve just completed that process with two exciting days at the Nikkei National Museum. The project has come a long way since our most recent Spring Institute and is poised for big things. With the support of the Vancouver Japanese Language School, our Teacher Resource Cluster has begun to build a preliminary website for primary school materials, which we anticipate being able to share in the spring. The Digital Archives Cluster is also hard at work.Our archivists have finalized copyright permissions with the largest repository of our digital records—Library and Archives Canada—and with the support of funds from the Frank H. Hori Foundation are preparing files for public use. In the Narrative Website Cluster, we’re developing content, working to convey this history in succinct and compelling stories online. Our Museum Exhibit Cluster has been especially active, conducting multiple consultations, submitting applications for additional funds, and, perhaps most excitingly, creating initial sketches of the exhibit. These too will be shared in April.
The meetings were also an opportunity for intellectual engagement. Joined by distinguished scholars from outside the project—Masako Iino (Tsuda University), Brian Hayashi (Kent State),Eric Muller (University of North Carolina), and Amanda Tyler (Berkeley)—we workshopped the introductory draft of the Landscapes of Injustice book (which will go to the publisher in the early new year) and heard presentations of Constitutional Stories, work complementing that of our own legal historian, Eric Adams.The dignitaries were impressed with the diversity and inclusivity of our team and with the work we are producing. Eric Muller, who read the book introduction en-route from Chapel Hill, remarked that he wanted to “stand up and applaud . . . but I was on a plane, so that would have been awkward.” The December meetings were,in all, a model of partnership and a perfect balance of the hard administrative work necessary to a project like ours and the deep engagement with history that it inspires. A hearty thanks and congratulations to all.
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