UBC Home

The Collections

Conservation

Curatorial + Design

Library + Archives

Collections + Research Stories See all

Collections + Research Stories

Anti-Asian Racism in the Historical Context: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians

This dialogue is part of MOA series Responsive Dialogues: Racism in Canada, sparked by recent anti-Black and anti-Asian violence in communities across North America, and the continued racism and oppression directed at Indigenous communities. Critically, the continued racism and oppression that is directed at Indigenous communities is a systemic problem that has been plagued this country for many generations, through state and institutional policies.

The series continues with Anti-Asian Racism in the Historical Context: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians, a video interview with MOA Curator of Asia Fuyubi Nakamura and Sherri Kajiwara, director/curator of the Nikkei National Museum, conducted in May 2021, which is Asian Heritage Month.

In this dialogue, Sherri and Fuyubi consider anti-Asian racism in the context of historical injustice done to the Japanese Canadian communities in relation to the Broken Promises exhibition at the Nikkei National Museum, which derives from the seven-year collaborative research project, Landscapes of Injustice.


Links

Landscapes of Injustice project

Landscapes of Injustice archive database

Broken Promises exhibition

Broken Promises virtual tour

Broken Promises self-guided tour: For Android | For IOS

Writing Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Protest Letters of the 1940s (Digital Museums of Canada online exhibition)

Sherri Kajiwara is the director and curator of the Nikkei National Museum, and has been a fine arts professional since 1992. Born in Japan, she was adopted and raised by Japanese Canadians in Canada. Sherri is dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Japanese Canadian history, arts and culture in contemporary ways.

Fuyubi Nakamura is a sociocultural anthropologist, and is Curator for Asia at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. Born in Tokyo, she has lived in eleven different places in six different countries before moving to Vancouver in 2014.