BY JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY OF SALT SPRING ISLAND
The third and final community event in The Suitcase Project exhibition takes place this Friday, June 23 at the Salt Spring Public Library program room.
Doors open at 6 p.m. for exhibition browsing (with refreshments available), followed by guest speaker Kirsten Emiko McAllister, Ph.D., professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University giving a presentation at 7 p.m. Called Japanese Canadian Memory Projects: Rebuilding the Community and Recognizing Our Responsibilities Today, McAllister will discuss the Japanese Canadian internment, dispossession, dispersal and the role of art in rebuilding the Japanese Canadian Community. She will also examine our responsibilities to Indigenous Nations and the other groups currently experiencing hardship, and how the community’s larger pursuit of social justice urges us to look beyond our own experiences of persecution.
The talk will offer an opportunity to acknowledge the painful memories of Japanese Canadians and the contentious history of British Columbia, allowing us to see the landscape in which we live with different eyes.
Together with The Suitcase Project by Kayla Isomur, the local Japanese Canadians’ history in photographs is also on display. The exhibition will be on until July 7 at the library’s program room.