{"id":543,"date":"2011-09-13T23:27:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T07:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/?p=543"},"modified":"2011-09-13T23:27:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T07:27:28","slug":"presidents-message-september-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/presidents-message-september-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"September 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTalk Story\u201d with Digital Storytelling<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"<\/a>In the best of Hawaiian tradition, we all \u2018talk story.\u2019\u00a0 With friends, family and even with strangers we share our life experiences through our stories and in the process discover more about ourselves and teach others.\u00a0 Before the written word, there were tales \u2013 imagined or true – shared at gatherings ensuring the survival of the history and traditions of their people.\u00a0 Before engaging in mortal combat, a samurai would proudly announce his family lineage to his opponent so if he were to fall, his enemy will know of his family\u2019s accomplishments and transmit it to others.\u00a0 The residential totems of Canada\u2019s West Coast First Nations people proclaim their proud lineage.<\/p>\n

I have in my possession my maternal Grandfather\u2019s mon-tsuki<\/em>\u00a0 – a kimono bearing\u00a0 the maru no tachibana<\/em>\u00a0 family crest of a single orange blossom within a circle.\u00a0 The black silk kimono is quite worn and bears the faint pencil marks made by a relative who, at one time, was thinking of cutting it up to make silk handkerchiefs.\u00a0 Luckily it was rescued in time by my parents!\u00a0 I believe that this inanimate object possess a mana<\/em>, or life energy and is a tangible \u2018footprint\u2019 of my grandfather\u2019s existence on earth.\u00a0 It is a permanent bridge to my childhood in Kagoshima.\u00a0 We all leave behind such residual spiritual traces of our short time on this earth.<\/p>\n

My grandfather was a humble fisherman but his guidance and love shaped who I am today.\u00a0 When my family visited Kagoshima in 2006, it was important to me that my sons visit the family graves so that they could make a bond with the past.\u00a0 I remind them that their existence was due to the generations of family members who struggled to survive.\u00a0 By so doing, I have taken stock and opened the ghosts of memory past.\u00a0 Given the recording devices available to us today (even on our cell phone), we can leave larger and more permanent family \u2018footprint\u2019 for future generations.\u00a0 For a small community such as ours, these records are historically and anthropologically important.\u00a0 Social networks allow ordinary people a voice to honour their past and share it with a vast audience.<\/p>\n

The Canadian government policy of diaspora against the Nikkei community during and after World War II was meant to destroy our community.\u00a0 The subsequent high intermarriage rate and the lack of any large communities hastened our integration and assimilation.\u00a0 Digital Storytelling (DST) will allow us to maintain and enhance our community through cyberspace.\u00a0 DST is democratic, immediate and allows the subject to post thoughtful insights about their experiences that is not sanitized by \u2018facilitators\u2019.<\/p>\n

The NAJC Heritage Committee, has made a copy of the book, Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community<\/em> by Joe Lambert to all chapters prior to our annual general meeting.\u00a0 At the October AGM in Edmonton, we will be having a Digital Story telling session for delegates and alternates led by David Tanaka of Lethbridge who has been involved in this initiative for many years.\u00a0 The session should be an important step in accelerating the creation and collection of our peoples history.<\/p>\n

I encourage readers to investigate Digital Storytelling and use whatever recording devices that you have to capture your family\u2019s unique history and leave those digital \u2018footprints\u2019 for future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have in my possession my maternal Grandfather\u2019s \u2018mon-tsuki \u2018 – a kimono bearing the \u2018maru no tachibana\u2019 family crest of a single orange blossom within a circle. The black silk kimono is quite worn and bears the faint pencil marks made by a relative who, at one time, was thinking of cutting it up to make silk handkerchiefs. Luckily it was rescued in time by my parents! I believe that this inanimate object possess a \u2018mana\u2019 or life energy and is a tangible \u2018footprint\u2019 of my grandfather\u2019s existence on earth. It is a permanent bridge to my childhood in Kagoshima. We all leave behind such residual spiritual traces of our short time on this earth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}