Friday, March 25th, 2022 Ours to Tell: Ethics of Research in Indigenous and Japanese Canadian Communities

Description

Eastern 2:00-5:00 PM | Central 1:00-4:00 PM | Mountain 12:00-3:00 PM | Pacific 11:00 AM-2:00 PM  NOTE: This was a 3-hour event with a 10-minute break.   

 

For many years now, discussions have taken place between academics and community leaders on the ethics of research in racialized and Indigenous communities.  Ours to Tell is a collective of Japanese Canadian scholars, community leaders and allies joined in pursuit of change. Racialized researchers have faced longstanding marginalization, are often tokenized and treated as "native informants" in collaborative research rather than scholars in their own right. As well, those outside the community often claim information provided by community knowledge keepers as their “discovery” with no credit given to independent scholars and storytellers. "Unbiased research", "academic detachment" and/or "objectivity" have all been invoked to discount the work of racialized and Indigenous scholars who have chosen to conduct research within their own communities. This form of devaluation privileges research conducted by non-racialized researchers.   A dynamic group of panelistsl discussed the ethics of research in Asian communities, with a focus on, but not limited to Japanese Canadians. Participants included prominent Japanese Canadian scholars, junior Japanese Canadian researchers, and one of the country’s most dynamic leaders in Asian Canadian Studies. The discussion began with a keynote presentation by Dr. Margaret Kovach, an influential and highly regarded Indigenous scholar who has written extensively on the topic of Indigenous Research Methodologies.   Community leaders asked what strategies universities and government funders can employ to ensure that histories and stories told about us acknowledge and fully include our voices and research contributions.  

 

PARTICIPANTS BIOS:  DR. MARGARET KOVACH is of Nêhiyaw and Saulteaux ancestry from Treaty Four, Saskatchewan and a member of Pasqua First Nation. Dr. Kovach is the Associate Dean for Indigenous Education and a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, UBC (Vancouver).  She is a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. Among her publications, Dr. Kovach is the author of Indigenous Methodologies:  Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (University of Toronto Press) now in its 2nd edition (2021). She is a co-editor of the newly published edited book (2021) Royally Wronged:  The Royal Society of Canada and Indigenous Peoples (2021). Dr. Kovach is an internationally known scholar in Indigenous research methodologies with research interests that include Indigenous higher education and social justice approaches to education. Her research explores ways in which Canadian universities can cultivate environments that enhance the experience for Indigenous scholars and graduate students.    

 

JENNIFER MATSUNAGA  is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. Her interdisciplinary research examines reparations for historical injustices in the context of settler states with a particular focus on Canada. She reflects on themes such as truth telling, intergenerational/historical/racial trauma, shame, resilience, assimilation, and colonization. Rooted in her lived experience as a sansei or third generation Japanese Canadian, the stories of her family’s and community’s internment and redress motivate much of her work. She is an active member of numerous academic and community-based committees dealing with questions of decolonization, anti-racism and social justice. She is a founding member of the School of Social Work’s Kinistòtàdimin: On se comprend Circle at the University of Ottawa.   

 

MONA OIKAWA is Associate Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University. With Professor Bonita Lawrence, she co-founded the undergraduate degree program, Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity, from which the Indigenous Studies Program was launched in 2018.  She is the author of Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment.  Mona and Kirsten Emiko McAllister are co-editors (with Roy Miki) of the forthcoming book After Redress.   

 

PAMELA SUGIMAN is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto. Dr. Sugiman is a member of the Board of Directors of the Atkinson Foundation and Pathways to Education Canada. She is a recipient of the Errol Aspevig Award for Outstanding Academic Leadership (Ryerson), Outstanding Contribution Award (Canadian Sociological Association), Marion Dewar Prize in Canadian Women’s History and has been named as a W.L. Morton Lecturer, Trent University. Dr. Sugiman has written extensively about memory, racism and the internment of Japanese Canadians.   

 

TOD DUNCAN is the manager of content development for a non-profit association representing municipal social service managers throughout Ontario. There he conducts research on poverty, childcare, and housing to provide education, training, and advocacy for the association’s members. Tod has an MA in Political Science and is a PhD candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University. His dissertation research focuses on the development of Canadian multiculturalism and its relationship to the internment and redress of Japanese Canadians. Tod has also studied and researched labour and human rights law, as well as migrant labour and the economy.  

 

BAILEY IRENE MIDORI HOY is a research assistant and graduate of the University of Toronto. A fourth-generation Japanese Canadian, her interests involved work related to diaspora, feminism, and material culture. She will be starting her Master’s at the University of British Columbia in September 2022.  

 

LAURA ISHIGURO is a yonsei settler living on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ territories, and a faculty member in History and Asian Canadian & Asian Migration Studies at UBC. Her current work is reimagining how we tell and teach histories of people of Asian descent, particularly nikkeijin, in northern North America.  

 

KIRSTEN EMIKO MCALLISTER is a Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. In addition to researching contemporary issues of displacement and exclusion, she has worked closely with Issei and Nisei elders as well as Sansei artists to learn about the intergenerational aftermath of WWII interment camps.  

 

DR. HENRY YU works in collaboration with community organizations, civic institutions, and government. The often-untold stories of struggles for inclusion and justice inspire him. He is a founding member of the Chinese Canadian Museum  among others, and an honorary member of the National Association of Japanese Canadians Advisory Council.