Japanese-Canadian fishing boasts seized at Annieville. BC Archives C-07293
Please click on this link for a full length recording of Pamela Sugiman’s presentation.
Recorded by Chorong Kim, edited by Dave Lang
Acts of Kindness and Complicity: The silence of bystanders and eyewitnesses to the dispossession and internment of Japanese Canadians
Dr. Pamela Sugiman
Royal BC Museum
Newcombe Conference Hall
Sunday, January 28, 2018 2:00-3:30 pm
Free
In this talk, distinguished oral historian Dr. Pamela Sugiman confronts the complexity and messiness of human relationships. She reveals a troubling silence: not the silence of Japanese Canadians, but rather of their friends, neighbours, classmates, teachers, co-workers, employers and religious leaders. Based on her interviews with these bystanders and witnesses, she explains who they are and how they remember the ugliness of Canada’s past, how they shared their memories with their children and grandchildren, and how their stories have changed her own understanding of Canadian history, memory and racism.
Dr. Sugiman will also introduce her new book, Witness to Loss: Race, Culpability, and Memory in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians, co-edited with Uvic historian Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross.
About the speaker: Dr. Pamela Sugiman is a professor and Dean of Arts in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University. She joined Ryerson in 2006 after holding a tenure-stream position for 15 years at McMaster University. In the course of her career, Dean Sugiman has built a reputation for creativity, collegiality, transparency and vision. She has had a long-standing commitment to issues of social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. These values are rooted in her personal history and have profoundly shaped her scholarly pursuits. Dr. Sugiman is the Oral History research cluster chair in the Landscapes of Injustice research project.
This event is a joint initiative with:
Lansdowne Lecture Series: Presented by the Uvic History Department, Royal BC Museum and Nikkei National Museum
Distinguished Women Scholars Lecture Series: Presented by Landscapes of Injustice housed at the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives with support from the University of Victoria Departments of History, Germanic and Slavic Studies, Gender Studies, Pacific and Asian Studies and Political Science as well as the Faculty of Humanities. Additional support provided by the Royal British Columbia Museum and the Nikkei National Museum.