The Legacy of Japanese Canadian Redress: A Reflection/An Assessment
Presented by Dr. Roy Miki, Professor Emeritus (English) of Simon Fraser University. Dr. Miki is an award-winning poet and was one of the leaders in the fight for Japanese Canadian redress. He is the author of several books, including Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (Raincoast 2004), as well as five books of poems. His third book of poems, Surrender(Mercury Press 2001), received the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
Time: 4:30 pm, Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Location: David Strong Building C116, UVIC
Victoria, BC
On September 22, 1988, Japanese Canadians finally achieved their goal of “justice in our time” for their wrongful internment during the 1940s. On that day, the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) signed a redress agreement with the federal government.
In his talk, Dr. Miki returns to the dynamics of redress in the 1980s, reflecting on the major elements of the NAJC’s position as well as the social and political contexts that shaped the formation of its redress movement. From this perspective, he will offer an assessment of the legacy of redress through an examination of redress agreements offered to other groups. He includes a comparative look at Japanese Canadian redress and the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the most substantial redress agreement to date, signed on May 8, 2006, by representatives of residential school survivors and the federal government.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
