Registration and Information tables open

First Nations Blessing
Gloria Wilson, Squamish Nation

NAJC Welcome
Opening Plenary Keynote Address: Arthur K. Miki, C.M.

Plenary Session
Redress: Never Too Late
Moderator: Arthur K. Miki, C.M.
Panelists: Albert Lo, President of Canadian Race Relations Foundation
Chief Robert Joseph,( Aboriginal community)
Avvy Go, (Chinese Canadian community)
Andrew Hladyshevsky, (Ukrainian Canadian community)

Mr. Andrew Griffith, Director General, Multiculturalism and Human Rights, Canadian Heritage

Respondents:
Professor David Divine, Afro-Canadian community
Harbhajan Gill, Komagata Maru Heritage Foundation
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Description: This session will include speakers from communities who have achieved formal redress settlements from the Canadian government for past injustices inflicted upon them through government actions and legislations. The panelists will address the following areas:

1. - Brief overview of the terms of agreement;
   - Impact of the redress settlement for individuals and the community;
   - Actions that will be taken to ensure that the past will not be forgotten; and
   - Issues which remain outstanding.

Video (looped) Screenings*

1. Lynda Nakashima, As Long As I Can Remember: The Powell Street Festival at 25, Documentary, 2001.
2. Rafael Tsuchida and Lyndsay Sung, The Way We Are, Documentary, 2007.
3. The Powell Street Revue and Rick Shiomi, Images of the First 100 Years, Documentary, 1980.
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Luncheon:
Performances*
1. Shakuhachi and percussion, by Alcvin Ramos and Bernie Arai
2. Reading, by Mark Nakada.
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Video (looped) Screenings*

Ruby Truly, Homecoming `92 – Before the Uprooting (1993, Video Out Distributions).
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Kokoro Dance

Site specific dance in the Powell Street neighborhood
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Building Partnerships and Right Relations with Aboriginal Peoples
Sponsored by NAJC Human Rights Committee
Coordinators: Terumi Kuwada, Kim Uyede-Kai, and Judy Hanazawa
Co facilitator: Gloria Wilson, RSW, Squamish Nation Elder, retired Director of Squamish Nation Social Development Department
Presenters: Mary Kitagawa, member of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens Association Human Rights Committee and retired teacher, Lorna Williams Assistant Professor & Director of Aboriginal Education, Faculty of Education, Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia)
Special guests, Kukpi7Christian and Kukpi7Ignace, will be adding their voices to the important work of building partnerships and establishing rights relations with Aboriginal peoples
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Description: Japanese Canadians arrived from Japan, the land of their ancestors, to Canada, the land of the Aboriginal peoples. On this land, both peoples experienced the greater and lesser impact of systemic racism, human rights violations, displacement, family separations, community ruptures, and losses of identity and self-esteem.

The workshop offers opportunity for dialogue between these communities, and others, to encourage partnerships, to give voice to the impacts of the legacies of the Indian Act and Indian Residential Schools, and World War II War Measures Act internment of Japanese Canadians. Dialogue will include sharing what it has meant to receive monetary compensation for wrongs committed and how the wrongs done to communities have been redressed.

Envisioning the Future: Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation

Moderator: Katherine Shozawa
Panelists: Dr. Henry Shimizu and Tony Tamayose

Screening of SAIKI: Regeneration. The Legacy of the Japanese Redress Foundation by Mieko Ouchi, filmmaker.

Description: This roundtable discussion will provide an overview of past accomplishments of the Japanese Canadain Redress Foundation and NAJC Endowment Fund while addressing issues of present-day sustainability and hopes for the future.


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Re(a)ddressed: I am (Japanese) Canadian
Exploring the Present & Future of Japanese Canadian-ness

Coordinator: Caitlin Ohama-Darcus
Guest Presente: Jeff Chiba Stearns
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Description:An interactive youth workshop that seeks to explore the changing face of Japanese Canadian identity. Through doodles, scribbles and dialogue, participants will reflect on their own sense of Japanese Canadian-ness and together imagine the role of JC youth in the future. This workshop will also seek to gather ideas for an initiative aimed at reviving youth involvement in the JC communities across Canada. All ages welcome but youth involvement is especially encouraged.

Special Performance:  Chi Kyuu No Stage - Frontline for Peace
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Description: This is a multi-media performance that screens images of conflict-torn countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, etc., with narrations and original music compiled by Dr. Norihiko Kuwayama (Yamagata Prefecture, Japan), intended for diverse audience with special focus on youth. The performance has through the years toured all over Japan. This is their first performance outside of Japan.

First Nations Blessing
Larry Grant, Musqueam Nation

Beyond Anti-Racism

Keynote Speaker:  Dr. Philomena Essed (Antioch University)
Moderator:  Randy Enomoto
Keynote Speaker: Philomena Essed(Antioch University), Responders: Audrey Kobayashi (Queens University), Monika Kin Gagnon (Concordia University), Raj Gill (Langara College) and Marcia Crosby (University of British Columbia).
Group Moderators (t.b.a.)
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Description: The paradigm for most antiracism struggles in the past has been that of resistance and opposition. This is reflected in the fact that much activism has positioned itself in an adversarial framework. The struggles have been against racism, against discrimination, against injustice, against oppression, etc.

A consequence of the resistance/protest paradigm is that it generates “othering”: a split into “us and them,” the powerful and powerless, victim and oppressor, allies and enemies. It follows that the language of such struggles has tended to be the language of protest, accusation judgment and recrimination.

As we near the end of the first decade in a new century, the burden of responsibility for social activists is to locate other models of action that will allow a shift from othering and “againstness” to “forness” and inclusion and hold the promise of a faster move to peacemaking and reconciliation.

The plenary will explore a number of key questions in relation to antiracism:
Is the “anti” or oppositional paradigm a necessary one, rooted in historical conditions? Has the construct of antiracism outlived its usefulness for change agents; if so, what concepts/models can move us forward?
What is the content of positioning for “forness” instead of “againstness”
What models of peacemaking and reconciliation can we draw from in transiting from “againstness” to “forness”?
Can we construct a road map to get from current practices to future practices?

Past, Present, and Future:  Ijusha (Immigrant) Workshop
Introduction:  Tatsuo Kage
Moderator:  Masa Kagami
Panelists: Alex Nagao (Calgary), Yumi Schoenhofer (Ottawa), Yusuke Tanaka (Toronto), Takeo Yamashiro (Vancouver),
Respondents: Mitsuo Hayashi, Etsuko Kato, Leslie Komori , Takashi Ogasawara and Naoko Takei.
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Background: The Redress settlement of 1988 is regarded as a major achievement for human rights and democratic principles in Canada. Even though Ijusha (postwar immigrants) had not experienced the wartime injustices, there are lessons to be learned from this event having future implications. Ijusha joins with other Canadians to be vigilant of any future abuse of rights of minorities and to be ready to express concerns whenever injustices occur.

Postwar immigration of skilled workers began around 1967 when non-discriminatory regulations were introduced. Immigrants from Japan have always been small in number, less than 1,000 annually, reflecting Japan’s economic prosperity. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, majority were men or young nuclear families. Compared with other Asian countries, Japanese immigrants had a tendency not to sponsor their immediate family members, such as parents. Those who arrived in this period are now reaching retirement age and their adult children are pursuing their own roles as socially or professionally active persons.

In the 1980’s retired immigrants arrived, but a program for retirees was terminated around 1990. From the beginning of the 1990’s noticeably many women in their 20’s and 30’s arrived as the wives of Canadians. They constitute the majority of newly arrived Ijusha in recent years.

Workshop Description: With these changes and the revitalization of community through Redress Settlement in mind, the experiences of Ijusha or postwar immigrants and the challenges they encounter in their professional, social and family lives in a new environment, are encouraged to be shared and heard. The discussion will include issues regarding the role of Ijusha in the Nikkei community, and the roles to be played by their children and grandchildren who are increasingly playing an active role in the community.

Video (looped) Screenings*
1. Jay Hirabayashi, Rage, From Issei to Sansei: The History of My Grandfather’s Life
Documentation of Performance. 1987. Video Out Distributions.
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Japanese Canadian National Museum, NNM&HC
Exhibition: View

Performances*

1. Yujiro Nakajima, Guitar, and Harry Aoki, Bass
2. Mariko Kage, dance performance, "See the Women"


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Telling Stories, Questioning Japanese Canadian Identities: Research, Writing, Visual Art as Cultural Practices

Moderator:Scott Toguri McFarlane
Participants: Hiromi Goto (author), Dr. Kirsten McAllister (Assistant Professor, School of Communications, Simon Fraser University), Roy Miki, C.M. (poet, writer) and Mona Oikawa (York University)
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Description: The panel of Japanese Canadian researchers, writers, and artists will discuss why they have committed themselves to telling the many stories of our community, addressing our fears and silences as well as imagining new futures. Speakers on this panel have struggled over the way Japanese Canadians, like many racialized groups in Canada, have been represented in mainstream culture, whether as threats to national security or as exotic or tolerated others. Against such appropriations, they have sought to produce cultural works that question the limits of identity, explore new ways of speaking and writing, and present images and voices not always considered acceptable in the community or by their institutions and peers. The cultural practices they have adopted, which together spans a period of several decades, have changed what it means to self-identity as Japanese Canadians not just personally but politically, in Canada, and more broadly, in a global world.

Video (looped) Screening*
Michael Fukushima, Minoru: Memory of Exile. 1992. Animated film, NFB
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Seniors Health Care workshop (title t.b.a.)

Presenters: Marcia Carr, (RN,BN,MS,GNC(C),NCA) Clinical Nurse Specialist - Acute Geriatrics, Geropsychiatry, Nurse Continence Advisor,
Fraser Health - Burnaby Hospital, Adjunct Professor: SFU - Gerontology Research Department; UBC - SON; U Victoria - SON and clinical assistant McMaster University – SON
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Description: One of the outcomes of the Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement was the development and building of Nikkei Place, a multipurpose complex housing - culture, heritage, history and seniors on a 3 acre parcel

In 2002, Nikkei Home assisted living was opened and has served seniors in the Japanese Canadian community and beyond. While Nikkei Home meets the needs of some of our seniors, there continues to be other gaps in residential services. One such area is the need for dementia care. The workshop today is an overview of the types of services and housing required to meet this need, a profile of the seniors who require this care and a discussion of alternatives to meet this need.

It is Nikkei Seniors Health Care and Housing Society long term plan to accommodate such a project within the property of Nikkei Place.

Youth Workshop:
1. Thinking for the Present, Re-visiting Redress
Moderator: Craig Ngai-Natsuhara
Panelists: Arthur K. Miki, C.M., Cassandra Kobayashi, Maryka Omatsu, Irene Tsuyuki
Respondent: Stacey Matsumoto, Bryan Tsuyuki-Tomlinson
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Description: This panel brings together leaders of the Redress movement, in dialogue with Japanese Canadian youth,to re-visit, comprehend, and appreciate the history which led to the Redress Settlement.

2. Faces and Roles of Young Japanese Canadians
Moderators: Derek Iwanaka and Karla Mukai
Panelists (tentative: Anne Marie Nakagawa (filmmaker), Denise Nawata, John Yamazaki (business, Powell Street Festival President), Jason De Couto (musician, educator), Justin Ault (Owner of Hapa Izakaya)
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Description: This panel features some of Canada’s young, bright, and rising leaders. What is the future of this changing community? Speakers will focus on engaging and inspiring Japanese Canadian youths through stories of their experiences in entrepreneurial, academic, artistic, and political activities. Panelists will reflect on any connections between their choice of occupation and interest, and their Japanese Canadian identity.

Performance
Nishihara Kage Duo (Alison Nishihara, pianist; Eileen Kage, percussion player / composer)

Gala Dinner Program (t.b.a.)

Keynote Speaker: AFN National Chief Mr. Phil Fontaine, B.A., LL.D.(R.M.C.), LL.D.(Brock), LL.D.(Windsor)

Performances*

1. Takeo Yamashiro, Shakuhachi, and Teresa Kobayashi, koto.
2. Nishihara Kage Duo (Alison Nishihara, pianist, Eileen Kage, percussion player/composer)
3. Katari Taiko
View Bios

Japanese Canadian National Museum, NNM&HC
Exhibition: View

Performance*
Chibi Taiko
View Bios

Special Performance:  Chi Kyuu No Stage - Frontline for Peace
View Bio

Description: This is a multi-media performance that screens images of conflict-torn countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, etc., with narrations and original music compiled by Dr. Norihiko Kuwayama (Yamagata Prefecture, Japan), intended for diverse audience with special focus on youth. The performance has through the years toured all over Japan. This is their first performance outside of Japan.