Category: The Right to Remain

Greg Masuda’s documentary film, “The Right to Remain”

Premieres Saturday, August 8 @ 7pm local

on CBC TV BC and CBC TV Alberta

and online at cbc.ca/bc, cbc.ca/edmonton, and cbc.ca/calgary

Vancouver Downtown Eastside residents find an unexpected and influential ally as they fight to save their community from developers.

Since the Summer of 2014, The Right to Remain Community Fair has engaged local residents and artists in conversations about the human rights legacies of the Downtown Eastside, drawing attention to the historic cycles of urbanization that have dispossessed its inhabitants of Indigenous, Japanese, Chinese, African, and other ancestries of their lands, communities, identities, and properties. One of the most potent ideas informing the Right to Remain is the Medicine Wheel, a four-coloured Indigenous symbol that represents balance, unity, and belonging. Designed by artist-facilitator Ali Lohan in consultation with Joyce Rock and Quin Martins, the Right to Remain logo emerged out of a need for a familiar, inclusive, and community-friendly design that made connections between place, inhabitation, and wellbeing in the Downtown Eastside.

 

As artist-facilitator Herb Varley explains, the Medicine Wheel symbolizes completeness and wholeness. The circle is thought of as the perfect shape because it is equally strong at each point, it has no beginning and no end, and it has a cyclical, continuous quality. According to Varley, there are many teachings that come from the four colours of the Medicine Wheel. In one, the colours represent the four directions, which are related to states of being: physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional. In other teachings, the colours represent the four peoples of the earth and the four stages of life (child, youth, adult, elder). In all cases though, the four elements need to be in balance for the unity and wholeness to be realized.

 

For Varley, the Medicine Wheel relates to the idea of the Right to Remain in a number of ways. First, the fact that the teachings of the Medicine Wheel even exist is because Indigenous peoples have asserted a Right to Remain who they are even as the government tried to erase and suppress such traditions. In terms of the Right to Remain in the Downtown Eastside, the use of the Medicine Wheel acknowledges the continuous Indigenous presence in, and character of, the area. It signals a resistance to developments benefiting those with financial and cultural power, and denotes a balanced and holistic approach to addressing low income people’s need to be in place. Varley also reminds us that if people were living by the teachings of the Medicine Wheel in a good and humane way, then the question of who has the Right to Remain would not come up as often as it does, because no one would actually have to fight for it. Such a change would give people time to focus on their lives without worrying about their rights being violated, or their homes being taken from them.

 

The Indigenous symbol of the Medicine Wheel, as used in the Right to Remain logo, communicates a message of unity, balance, wholeness, and belonging. It represents the hope that all residents of the Downtown Eastside find strength in this message as they assert a Right to Remain in the face of marginalization and displacement.

Right to Remain Workshop Presentations

Date: November 8th, 2014

Time: 4:00 PM

Location: Gallery Gachet, 88 E. Cordova St.

 

 

On November 8th, the artists team gathered at Gallery Gachet as part of the Heart of the City festival to talk about their experiences in the workshops that they facilitated, and to present some of the artwork that has been produced over the summer. Richard of AHA Media was on hand to capture the event on video and in photographs. See his media gallery from the event here! – http://ahamedia.ca/2014/11/08/right-to-remain-for-11th-annual-downtown-eastside-heart-of-the-city-festival-2014-in-vancouver-on-nov-8-2014/

Andy Mori MC’d the event and welcomed everyone to the space. Then, with a rotating slideshow of images from past workshops as a backdrop, Herb Varley acknowledged the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and the Tseil-Waututh peoples. Herb also talked at length about the historical displacements in the neighbourhood in light of the current displacement of low-income individuals. Beth Carter from the Nikkei National Museum spoke briefly about the Japanese Canadian history of the neighbourhood.

 

Then, using selected images from the slideshow, Herb, Quin Martins, Andy Mori, and Karen Ward spoke about their experiences with the project and described the workshops that they facilitated. Though there were a couple of AV cues that we missed, it was powerful to hear the artists make the connections and talk about the successes and difficulties from their workshops. After the artists presented, Diane Wood showed us an intricate quilt that she was working on which drew on the “Four Directions.” The piece demonstrated how people and places all around the world were interwoven into the Downtown Eastside, and it made a strong stand for resilience and community. Significantly, idea of the “right to remain” seemed to resonate with the audience, and many important dialogues emerged in the question and answer period that followed the presentations.

 

All in all, the event went really well. There was a good turnout and good response to the project! In addition, it was really valuable to have an event where the artists and participants could decompress and review what had happened over the summer.

 

Special thanks to the RRCF Arts Team, Cecily Nicholson and Kristin Lantz of Gallery Gachet for their administration of the event, and Teresa Vandertuin of the Heart of the City for her encouragement and material support.

“Making the Links” workshop

Date: October 19th, 2014

Time: 1:00 PM

Location: Downtown Eastside SRO Convention, Vancouver Japanese Hall, 487 Alexander St.

As part of the Downtown Eastside SRO Convention, the Right to Remain artists held a 2 hour workshop called “Making the Links,” to help link past histories of displacement in the Downtown Eastside with current struggles around gentrification, marginalization, and homelessness while asserting a right to remain in the DTES in the face of such pressures. Participants decorated a few hundred cardboard circles with text, poetry and images. These circles were then hung on the Gallery Gachet “Art Cart” as mobiles and in streams like bunting. All in all, the workshop went really smoothly. People were excited to write messages and decorate the cardboard circles, and the artworks that were produced told a powerful story of resilience in the face of displacement. Furthermore, the convention was extremely fun with great food and good participation. Everyone’s hard work really showed!

Right to Remain Workshop at the Nikkei National Museum

Date: October 9th, 2014

Time: 2:00 PM

Location: Nikkei National Museum, 6688 Southoaks Crescent, Burnaby

 

The RRCF arts team joined five participants from the DTES community and traveled by skytrain, bus and walking together to Burnaby and the host of the workshop, the Nikkei national Museum and Cultural Centre.  We met with NNM Director Beth Carter and her staff, and seven other people from the Nikkei community, making a full workshop of over twenty people.  Tea, coffee, fruit and other snacks were provided.

 

After initially sitting in conversation at two separate tables, we placed the tables together in the centre of the room and together the Nikkei and DTES community members acknowledged the First Nations Territories.  RRCF team member Andy Mori introduced himself and the postcard project first introduced at the Powell Street Festival and Oppenheimer Park, followed by introductions of the whole group. Kathy Shimizu, Nikkei community organizer and member of the Powell Street Festival Advocacy Committee, joined us.

 

Downtown Eastside resident participants Tina Eastman and Brian Humchitt presented the eldest person from the hosting group with a traditional rattle.  Andy Mori facilitated the workshop and guided participants in ways to engage with the flag and the postcards. These were informal elements designed to promote dialogue between the Nikkei and Low-income DTES communities.  Particularly interesting was a discussion of gentrification in the neighbourhood, and different perspectives on what it meant for residents.

 

Trevor Wideman screened Greg Masuda’s short film about “Revitalizing Japantown” and Human Rights to small groups during the workshop, and Beth Carter took DTES participants on a guided tour of the 2nd floor exhibition and the main exhibition, which proved to be a highlight.  Everyone received a RRCF button and a postcard as a souvenir, and was invited to the presentation at Gallery Gachet on Nov 8, held in conjunction with the Heart of the City.

 

Beth Carter and the RRCF arts team felt this was a significant moment in developing stronger relationships and dialogue between the Nikkei and current low-income DTES communities.

 

Performance Art with Herb Varley

Date: September 18th, 2014

Time: 2:00 PM

Location: Gallery Gachet, 88 E. Cordova St.

Herb Varley led an exciting theatre workshop at Gallery Gachet, engaging participants in creating tableaux vivants (“living pictures”) and vignettes. The method was based on a storytelling process where participants describe a human rights experience that has occurred in their lives, here in the Downtown Eastside.

 

As the experience was being told a note taker (see below) captured elements of the event to be used later in the process to create Human Rights ‘vignettes’. The experience was then recreated by “sculpting” workshop participants into a scenario that told the story. These sculptures were also photographed.

 

Using these elements – flipchart notes, photos and human sculptures – the next phase was to collectively sketching out a short story or vignette that reflected multiple experiences of Human Rights in the DTES. The whole group used the notes captured from the story to create the vignette, and the human sculptures/“human clay” was a great physical jumping off point, or inspiration.

 

This workshop stood out in that the medium was performance rather than visual, and while participants (and the RRCF team) were enthusiastic, we are still working through ideas to support extensions of this process in the future.

Right to Remain Workshop at the Powell Street Festival

Date: August 1 & 2, 2014

Time: Noon-3:00 PM

Location: Powell Street Festival, Alexander Street

From Andy Mori’s reflection on the Powell Street Festival/Oppenheimer Park Tent City Postcard Project:

 

In a “Revitalizing Japantown?” arts team brainstorming session for its upcoming participation at the Powell Street Festival we hit upon an idea. Why not have the festival participants write postcards of encouragement to the Oppenheimer Part Tent City and visa versa? This would be an actual bridge between communities across the divides of history showing the common concern about human rights.

 

I did the graphic design of the postcards choosing images from the boys team of Asahi Baseball, a local legendary Japanese Canadians baseball program before the war. A second set of postcards designed with a photo of the tent city occupying the very area of the baseball diamond what are the boys one stood was used as well to lend a bridge across time in the same location. Once implemented at the festival, the postcards were written by festival goers who signed over 30 of them supervised and encouraged by myself and arts team members Ali Lohan and Quin Martins. Using a rapidly obsolete medium reinforced its performative aspect of replicating historic communication practises. Varley and arts team member Karen Ward were assigned the task of taking the Tent City postcards to Oppenheimer Park for its occupants to sign and send back to the festival. This process is still ongoing as there are formalities, obstacles and issues of trust in order to get those postcards signed and sent back but it is still being carried on.

 

I want to consider this postcard project to be a great success as avenues of history lessons, hand writing support as petitioning and acknowledgement of human rights were touched upon all at once. It also reminded how festival was originally a call of activism and Japanese Canadian redress, and that historic apologies still hang in the air waiting to be said still and their attendant responsibilities.