NAJC YLC Zoom Session – Privilege and Oppression: a Japanese Canadian Conversation
Sponsored by NAJC’s Young Leaders Committee
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021
8pm to 10pm EST (5pm PST/6pm MST/7pm CST)
Intersecting identities of gender, race, and sexuality can influence how we relate to one another as Japanese Canadians. Join an intergenerational panel who will share their professional and lived experience of privilege and oppression and the importance of these concepts for our community. PeerNet BC will facilitate this panel conversation, which will lead into interactive anti-oppression workshops offered in March.
Sponsored by the National Association of Japanese Canadians (Young Leaders Committee)
Shō is a Yonsei writer and wanderer. His grandmother’s family (山城) immigrated to Tongva Territory (Los Angeles) from Taminato, a village in the Yanbaru rainforest in Northern Okinawa. His grandfather’s family (田中) emigrated from Buzen Shoe, Fukuoka to Tlingit territory (Juneau, Alaska). Currently Shō resides on the homelands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples (Victoria, British Columbia). He is putting the finishing touches on his first poetry collection entitled shima and has also been researching the stories of Okinawans and Alaska Natives who were incarcerated during the Second World War.
Nicole Yakashiro is a yonsei settler of Japanese, German, and Russian descent, born and raised on occupied and unceded Stó:lō territory. She is a PhD student in the department of History at the University of British Columbia on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory, where she researches foodways, farming labour, and property-ownership among non-Indigenous people of colour as they relate to settler colonialism in British Columbia during the twentieth century. She is also a member of the Powell Street Festival Society’s Advocacy and Outreach Committee.
Pauline Kajiura works toward social justice, equity, and inclusion in her community and workplaces. As a partner of Intersecting, she provides anti-racism and anti-oppression education and training. Currently, Pauline is Project Manager, Community Inclusion and Equity at the City of Hamilton and a member of the NAJC’s Human Right’s Committee. She has worked as Executive Director of Information Hamilton and Financial Coordinator of SACHA, (Sexual Assault Centre of Hamilton and Area). Pauline has served on numerous boards and committees with such organizations as the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, YWCA Hamilton, Immigrants Working Centre, the National Association of Japanese Canadians, and the City of Hamilton’s Committee Against Racism. She holds a BSc from McGill University and also lends music performance to her activism.
