Local Indigenous ways of knowing and learning in the classroom through Community-engaged learning

This paper reflects on the impact of community-engaged learning (CEL) in post-secondary education, as guided by local Indigenous community members, specifically members of the Anishinaabeg Nation and more specifically Mississauga peoples. This CEL way of educating highlights a fundamental difference between Indigenous axiology, where localized relationships and community contributions are paradigm, with traditional Euro-Western hegemonic pedagogies. Within this framework, we hope to contribute to the larger discourse in revising the axiological foundation applied to knowledge within the Academy, based on authentic expressions of an Indigenous way of knowing and learning. We seek to recapitulate the ways that knowledge in the field of anthropology (and post-secondary education in general) is valued and assessed through the first-hand experiences of two cis male Anishinaabe academics, and one cis female Japanese Canadian academic, involved in the development and delivery of community-engaged learning on Turtle Island.

Enacting Ethnicity of “Japanese Canadian” in Oral History: A Comparison Between the Japanese Canadian Sansei and the Ijusha Nisei

This paper presents the non-essentializing analysis of ethnic identity formation in comparative research between two groups in the Japanese Canadian community: the Japanese Canadian Sansei and the Ijusha Nisei. Using an oral history approach to understand the development of ethnic identity, I discuss how the social assignment of “otherness” based on the corporeal difference has negatively influenced identity formation in both groups. My comparative analysis further uncovers some of the different strategies that each group takes against the racializing process. Whereas the Japanese Canadian Sansei claim their cultural citizenship in the history of Japanese Canadians by aligning their own personal past with the collective memory of Japanese Canadians, the Ijusha Nisei negotiate it by entitling themselves as a contemporary representative of the ideology of multiculturalism. Finally, understanding the different processes of ethnic identity formation and strategies of negotiation for social inclusion, I discuss the effects of the ideology of multiculturalism on cultural citizenship among Japanese Canadians.

Enacting Ethnicity of “Japanese Canadian” in Oral History: A Comparison Between the Japanese Canadian Sansei and the Ijusha Nisei

This paper presents the non-essentializing analysis of ethnic identity formation in comparative research between two groups in the Japanese Canadian community: the Japanese Canadian Sansei and the Ijusha Nisei. Using an oral history approach to understand the development of ethnic identity, I discuss how the social assignment of “otherness” based on the corporeal difference has negatively influenced identity formation in both groups. My comparative analysis further uncovers some of the different strategies that each group takes against the racializing process. Whereas the Japanese Canadian Sansei claim their cultural citizenship in the history of Japanese Canadians by aligning their own personal past with the collective memory of Japanese Canadians, the Ijusha Nisei negotiate it by entitling themselves as a contemporary representative of the ideology of multiculturalism. Finally, understanding the different processes of ethnic identity formation and strategies of negotiation for social inclusion, I discuss the effects of the ideology of multiculturalism on cultural citizenship among Japanese Canadians.

Unsettling Claims of Belonging:

Starting from the premise that we have to know where we have been to know where we are going, this piece looks heavily to the past and considers the effects of differently experienced belonging in Canada across generations. This autobiographical reflection questions how we might read migrant-settler narratives of belonging alongside Indigenous struggles for sovereignty in such a way that desires for belonging do not displace or erase such struggles but rather support them. Reflecting on my experiences of belonging and shame as a Japanese Canadian of mixed Japanese and British ancestry, the article seeks to deconstruct and disrupt settler-migrant stories by examining citizenship and belonging from these different perspectives.

(Re)storying Japanese Canadian Histories: Artistic Engagements

This paper examines how Japanese Canadian (JC) artists challenge discursive limitations of constructing representations of JC pasts. Their interventions into JC history-making are significant given the rise of interest in and proliferation of JC historical accounts, partly as a result of the accelerated passing of the remaining survivors of JC incarceration within a broader context of unsettled and unsettling discourses around incarceration in JC families and communities. Contrary to narratives of JC history premised on the conventions of academic history writing, we explore how JC artists engage with the past through their creative practices. Focusing on JC artist Emma Nishimura’s exhibit, The weight of what cannot be remembered, we suggest that JC creative history-making practices have important implications for processes of ethno-racial and-cultural identity formation. In so doing, we decenter state-bound history-making processes that reproduce colonial frameworks of JC subjectivity, temporal linearity, and “objectivity.” Instead, we focus on the temporally circuitous way that Nishimura and other JC artists engage with the past through the idiom of personal intimacy in ways that facilitate a more expansive notion of JC identity and community. Though Nishimura’s work is indexical as opposed to representative of contemporary JC art-making, it is significant in tapping into a common structure of feeling among JC artists that emphasizes a notion of JC’ness rooted in the active struggle to establish a relationship with the past. In attending to Nishimura’s work, we highlight the productivity of art-making as a method of (re)storying to expand meaning-making endeavors within and across communities.

Trans-poetics in Hiromi Goto’s novels

“Trans-” ideas — such as transgender, transnation, translation, and transculture — are being redefined in current research, and their full potential as critical categories is coming into view. Stryker, Currah, and Moore propose, for instance, that “transgender” should be seen not only as a descriptive term for identity, but as a valuable tool for dismantling the violence of the binary system and transcending traditional paradigm. In this article, I explore the possibilities of the prefix “trans” as a tool to dismantle discriminatory binary oppositions in Japanese Canadian writer Hiromi Goto’s novels. I argue that Goto creates transing spaces for her inbetweeners, or monsters. By claiming territory and affirming the value of liminal spaces for outcasts and misfits, those regarded as aliens or monsters can finally be at ease and at home. I also propose that the many dysfunctional families described in Goto’s novels are not only immigrant but transnational families that have to deal with transcultural politics to understand each other. Throughout my reading of the novels, the spatial-temporal dimensions of trans-ideas are stressed and demonstrated.

Taking Root in Floating Cities – Space, Environment, and Immigrant Identity in Kerri Sakamoto’s Floating City

Human identity is shaped not only by culture, but also by nature – the environment in which people grow up and live, the places and spaces they visit, work in, and pass on an everyday basis. This people-place bond is particularly important in case of immigrants who are forced to abandon the places they know for a new – and often hostile – environment. This connection between space, environment, and immigrant identity is explored by Kerri Sakamoto, a Japanese-Canadian writer, in her newest novel, Floating City (2018). Focusing on the family narrative of the Hanesakas – and, in particular, the story of Frankie, the oldest son of the family – Sakamoto tells the story of shaping identity through forming a connection with the environment and architecture. The aim of this article is to discuss the way in which Sakamoto presents the people-place bond and its impact on immigrant identity as represented by the connection of the Japanese-Canadians with four elements: water, air, earth, and fire. Furthermore, the article analyses Sakamoto’s version of an alternative history of Toronto and the possible solutions to the current environmental crisis it brings. For this purpose, the author uses a mixture of methodological concepts stemming from postcolonial theory and environmental psychology, such as homing desire, rootlessness, place attachment, non-place, and the people-place bond.

CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON ETHNICALLY TARGETED INTERNMENTS: A STUDY ON THE CHINESE INDIAN AND THE JAPANESE CANADIAN WARTIME EXPERIENCES

Purpose of the study: The purpose of the study is to provide a new theoretical interpretation of how nation-States have exercised control over targeted ethnic communities through the repressive act of camp internment. It uses two major global historical events as the frame of reference: the internment of the Chinese ethnic community in India during the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, and internment of the Japanese ethnic population in Canada during World War II. Methodology: This study draws on Michel Foucault’s theories on “biopolitics” to analyze the States’ mechanisms of control during wartime periods. The Foucauldian framework of “biopolitics” is used as a theoretical tool to develop a concurrent study on the internment experiences of the two ethnic groups, and provide a new understanding of the conceptualization of this regulatory decision enforced by the government. Main Findings: The findings show the internment as an expression of State-regulated biopolitical control, in which groups of people come under the administration of a power whose sole function is to subjugate their lives and bodies by detaining them in camps. It concludes that a mass internment decisions, usually taken under the pretext of “national security,” undermines the democratic set-up of a nation. Applications of this study: Taken together, findings of this study contribute to scholarly discussions in the field of social sciences and humanities. It will be of particular interest to those engaged in a contemporary interpretation of discriminatory actions against minority communities in the larger global context. It, however, carries a relevance beyond scholarly discourses – it warns us against replication of such unwarranted episodes in the future. Novelty/Originality of this study: Unlike most biopolitical studies regarding authoritarian regimes, this one develops the arguments through internment cases that occurred in the world's two leading democracies. Though Japanese Canadian internment has been studied widely, Chinese Indian study is still nascent. Analyzing these episodes together under theoretical paradigms throws new insights on the State's exertion of power upon a targeted population in a modern democratic system.Japanese Canadian Internment