Message from the Project Director- Jordan Stanger-Ross
What a time to be directing Landscapes of Injustice! As recipients of this newsletter (and especially members of the Collective) will know, we’ve been preparing for some time for the transition this spring to knowledge mobilization. In the first four years of our project, we were primarily a research team, focused on political, legal, geographical, and social historical research questions. Starting this spring, we’re an organization primarily devoted to communicating our findings to public audiences in our museum exhibit, teacher resources, an accessible archival database, and a narrative website.
In recent months, after some collective soul-searching, we realized that this transition should also include a change in our governance. The ideal committee to steer the new phase of our activity, we determined, was not quite the same as the committee that had steered our research phase. Working collegially at all levels of the project, we made significant changes, particularly at the level of the Steering Committee, which now includes representatives of all of our partner institutions with mandates in the Japanese-Canadian community (the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, the National Association of Japanese Canadians, the Nikkei National Museum, and the Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall), representatives of the bi-coastal museums that will also host our exhibit (the Royal BC Museum [Victoria] and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 [Halifax]), and two members of our Community Council, in addition to researchers and leaders of specific project activity. Our early December meetings of this new group were energetic and optimistic. As Project Director, I certainly came away with a renewed sense of purpose and of the deep community-based support for this work.
I’m delighted to introduce to the project its new Phase 2 Steering Committee:
Chair: Jordan Stanger-Ross (also Public History Website cluster co-chair)
Vice Chair: David Mitsui (NAJC rep)
Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre Rep: Elizabeth Fujita/Theressa Takasaki
Nikkei National Museum Rep: Sherri Kajiwara (Museum Exhibit cluster co-chair)
Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall Rep: Laura Saimoto
Royal BC Museum Rep: Leah Best (Museum Exhibit cluster co-chair)
Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 Rep: Steve Schwinghamer
Community Council Rep: Art Miki
Community Council Rep: Susanne Tabata
Research Assistants Rep: Sydney Fuhrman
Phase 1 Research Rep: Pam Sugiman
Executive Committee Rep: Audrey Kobayashi
Cluster Chairs:
Stewart Arneil (Archival Website cluster co-chair)
Melanie Hardbattle (Public History Website co-chair)
Greg Miyanaga (Teacher Resources cluster co-chair)
Mike Perry-Whittingham (Teacher Resources cluster co-chair)
Lisa Uyeda (Archival Website cluster co-chair)
To read the entire Newsletter in pdf form, click LoI Newsletter Winter 2018