The Paueru Gai Dialogues #4

Old Roots and New Relationships on Indigenous Lands 

Date: April 24, 2021
Time: 1PM – 3PM PST / 4PM – 6PM EST
Free admission. Registration Required.

Link to register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-paueru-gai-dialogues-4-tickets-148815333669

How can Japanese Canadians request the return of lost property in the Powell Street neighbourhood without perpetuating colonial practices?

Guest host Jeff Masuda and panelists Doris Chow, Justin Sekiguchi, and Chris Livingstone shift the white-centered colonial lens on housing, racial discrimination, and dispossession to an exploration of what it means to live and work on behalf of the multiracial and diverse community that dwells today on the unceded and occupied Indigenous territories of the Downtown Eastside. Participants will be invited into breakout groups to share their thoughts and experiences of building allyships across communities. To wrap up the event, everyone will reconvene to offer generative questions as catalysts for actions in solidarity.

We are grateful to Hapa Collaborative, SFU’s David Lam Centre, The Bulletin (JCCA), ElementIQ, The Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and City of Vancouver for financial and in-kind support.

Jeff Masuda is a Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor at Queen’s University. He is Sansei with ancestral connections to Powell Street. Jeff is known for his lead role in establishing the Right to Remain, a research collective that supports the tenant-led movement to undo historically layered injustices of inadequate housing conditions in Vancouver’s Single Room Occupancy Hotels.  

Doris Chow has been working in community development and social enterprise in the DTES since 2008, where she began learning about the complexity of issues faced by low-income Chinese senior residents. With these learnings she has developed a deep passion for grassroots community building and disrupting of status quos.  

Christopher Livingstone is a Mental Health Worker conducting outreach with Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre and co-founding member of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS), and a Director of the Aboriginal Front Door Society. Christopher is his colonial name. His traditional name is Ukws Kots’a, that is his traditional hereditary Nisga’a’ name. His work has included doing harm reduction, cultural safety and other supports to Indigenous Peoples living in tent cities, including at Oppenheimer park. He is also seasoned tent city resident, having lived at the Woodsquat in 2002, Victory Square in 2003, CRAB Park in 2003 and Anita Place in 2019. Also volunteers on the advisory committee with Community Action Initiatives Overdose Prevention and Education Network.  

Justin Sekiguchi is born and raised in Vancouver’s Historic Powell Street District/Downtown Eastside and has lived and worked in the community for most of his life. Justin has worked as a homeless outreach worker, activity programmer at Oppenheimer Park, and he is now an operations director for local non-profit MPA Society.