A Public Conversation about
Powell Street and the Downtown Eastside
Saturday, August 5, 2023
3:30–5:00pm | Vancouver Japanese Language School-Japanese Hall: Room #416
FREE
Join us for a public conversation with Henry Tsang, Nicole Yakashiro, and Right to Remain research collective members Jeff Masuda, Audrey Kobayashi, and Trevor Wideman about the historic dispossession of marginalized peoples in the Downtown Eastside and the relationship to the Japanese Canadian community prior to and since internment. The speakers are contributing writers in Henry Tsang’s recent book, WHITE RIOT: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, which will be available for purchase and signing by the authors.
This event complements the 360 Riot Walk guided tours offered at the 47th Annual Powell Street Festival and is supported by Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
HENRY TSANG is an artist and occasional curator who explores the spatial politics of history, cultural translation, community-building in relationship to place. His recent book, WHITE RIOT: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver, explores the conditions leading up to and the impact of a demonstration and parade in Vancouver, Canada, organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League and the ensuing mob attack on the city’s Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian communities. His art projects employ video, photography, interactive media, convivial events, and language, in particular, Chinook Jargon, the North American west coast trade language. Henry is an Associate Dean at Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
JEFFREY R. MASUDA is a Sansei Japanese Canadian settler scholar, presently located on lək̓ wəŋən lands at the University of Victoria. He is a founding member of the Right to Remain Research Collective, working to support the grass-roots tenant movement in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Jeff is a professor of Public Health and Social Policy and a human geographer by training.
AUDREY KOBAYASHI is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University. She has published extensively in the areas of human rights and activism, anti-racism, immigration, human geography theories, and the historical geographies of Japanese Canadian communities.
TREVOR WIDEMAN is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. Previously a research assistant with the Centre for Environmental Health Equity, his current work seeks to understand how urban planning mediates the politics of private property and how unconventional conceptions of land use might arise to reallocate power in the city.
The RIGHT TO REMAIN COLLECTIVE includes academic researchers and trainees, housing organizers, and tenants living in SROs in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Since 2016, its purpose has been to lend research in support of a multiracial tenants’ rights movement for decolonized, dignified, healthy, and sustainable housing futures in the neighbourhood.
NICOLE YAKASHIRO is a PhD candidate in the UBC Department of History, studying settler colonialism, race, and property relations in twentieth-century British Columbia.
