Powell Street Festival Society's online AGM will take place via Zoom, please register to receive your AGM package and Zoom link.
Date & Time: Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 7:00 PM Pacific Time Note that Katari Taiko’s AGM starts at 6:30 pm, so please consider logging in early to support them.
Also, your Annual Membership Top-Up is now available online! Please visit our website to purchase your Annual Membership (https://powellstreetfestival.com/get-involved/membership/). Annual Members receive a Membership Card valid until March 31, 2022, entitling you to discounts at local Membership Partner businesses.
May 5, 2021:
Happy Children’s Day -
Kodomo no Hi - 子供の日 !
The Powell Street Festival team wishes you and your family health and happiness!
Paueru Gai Dialogues #4 on YouTube
If you missed the fourth of the Paueru Gai Dialogues or just want to relive the experience, you can now watch presentations by guest host Jeff Masuda and panelists Doris Chow, Justin Sekiguchi, and Chris Livingstone — as they share stories and reflections on Old Roots and New Relationships on Indigenous Lands.
The Paueru Gai Dialogues #4 was also featured in Carnegie Community Centre's May Newsletter! You can read the edition HERE.
Thank you to Hapa Collaborative, The Bulletin (JCCA), ElementIQ, SFU David Lam Centres, The Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and City of Vancouver for their financial and in-kind support of this program.
The Paueru Gai Dialogues #5
Saturday, May 22, 1-3 pm PST
Free Online: Zoom
The fifth event, The Changing Environment and Humanity, is at 1 pm Pacific/4 pm Eastern on Saturday, May 22, 2021. This event is free, but donations are appreciated! For more information visit: www.powellstreetfestival.com/dialogues
Global warming and environmental protection are big inaccessible topics that point to news headlines, oil companies, pipelines and government policy.
Guest host Haruko Okano will facilitate a discussion with panelists Jen Sungshine, Rita Wong, and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss, who will provide insight into their daily lives, art practices and activism. Through houseplants, the food we eat, words we use, and lessons from Indigenous knowledge keepers, we can deepen our understanding of how we live in the world today, and how that contributes to the future of all beings.
Participants will be invited into breakout groups to share their experiences and thoughts about how we can work together across communities to fight for justice and social change. To wrap up the event, everyone will reconvene to offer generative questions as catalysts for actions in solidarity.
Talking the Walk: Reflections on 360 Riot Walk is a series of three free online panel discussions using 360 Riot Walk as an entry point to explore the history of anti-Asian violence and white supremacy in Vancouver.
360 Riot Walk is an interactive walking tour of the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver that traces the history and route of the mob that attacked the Chinese Canadian and Japanese Canadian communities following the demonstration and parade organized by the Asiatic Exclusion League in Vancouver. Participants are brought into the social and political environment of the time where racialized communities were targeted through legislated as well as physical acts of exclusion and violence. The soundtrack is available in four languages of the local residents of the period: English, Cantonese, Japanese and Punjabi.
This series is hosted by the Powell Street Festival in partnership with the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Financial support for the creation of 360 Riot Walk was provided by Creative BC and the BC Arts Council, Neighbourhood Matching Fund of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, and a SSHRC Explore Grant through Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
An Embodied Experience of History
Saturday, May 29, 2-3:30 pm PST
Free Online: Zoom
In the first of three panels, former participants from the guided walking tours share insight into their embodied experience of using Virtual Reality technology to invoke site-specific histories. With Sue Shon, Kathryn A. Bannai, Debbie Cheung, facilitated by Adiba Muzaffar.
June 19, 2021 | 2-3:30 pm PST
The Complexity and Nuance of Cultural Translation
In the second of three panels, translators for the Punjabi, Chinese and Japanese versions of the project address the power and subtleties of language and the challenges they encountered in translating the script of 360 Riot Walk. With Catherine Chan, Yurie Hoyoyon, Masha Kaur, facilitated by Henry Tsang.
More information and registration link to come.
Saturday, July 10, 2021 | 2-3:30 pm PST
What’s At Stake
In the third and final panel of the series, contributing writers to the 360 Riot Walk website speak to a breadth of significant issues and events that led to, and resulted from the 1907 riots. With Angela May, Michael Barnholden, Melody Ma, Paul Englesberg, facilitated by Henry Tsang.
More information and registration link to come.
Paueru Mashup Dance - Online Lessons
Thursdays, April 22 - May 30, 5-6 pm PST
Free Online: Zoom, Register HERE
Itching to move your body? Learn the Paueru Mashup, a community dance drawing on elements of Radio Taiso and Tanko Bushi. Commissioned by the Powell Street Festival Society with music created by Onibana Taiko and movements by Company 605, this high-energy dance is accessible for all ages and abilities.
No dance experience necessary! We'll have skilled dance instructors walking you through the movements as you learn from the comfort of your own home.
These are iterative lessons, so we encourage you to sign up for all the lessons so you can learn a new portion of the dance each week!
COMMUNITY NEWS
GVJCCA Session 4:
Deconstructing the Model Minority Myth
May 15, 1-3 pm PST
Free Online: Zoom, Register HERE or contact gvjccaantiracism@gmail.com
The GVJCCA's fourth and final online antiracism session is coming up May15 from 1-3pm PST.
In this session, we will be focusing on the model minority myth. Which communities are most affected? How is this myth perpetuated? In what ways is it harmful? How can we begin to deconstruct it? Guest speakers will provide their perspectives, followed by participant discussion in breakout rooms. All are welcome to join us in this conversation.
Guest speakers:
Eli Sheiner is a 4.5 generation “Japanese Canadian” who recently moved from Montreal to so-called Vancouver. Eli is active in the struggles against racism and the drug war, and is also a doctoral candidate in medical anthropology.
Audrey Kobayashi is a Patricia Monture Distinguished Scholar at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. She has worked in the Downtown Eastside, especially the Powell Street district, since the 1970s, and has written extensively on the historical geography of the Japanese-Canadian community, as well as on a range of issues of social justice and human rights.
Linda George is a Squamish Nation elder. She will provide the land acknowledgment for this session.
"Offerings - The Music of Leslie Uyeda" celebrates the extraordinary music of Japanese-Canadian composer Leslie Uyeda.
Featuring Kathryn Cernauskas (flute/bass flute), Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa (piano), Heather Pawsey (soprano) and Rebecca Wenham (cello), this intimate concert of chamber music invites you in to a conversation as well with Leslie Uyeda about her compelling and beautiful work
Offerings - The Music of Leslie Uyeda is the second concert presented by Astrolabe Musik Theatre as part of our 2021 digital season.
Original producing partners for this project include Historic Joy Kogawa House; the Powell Street Festival; and Pride in Art at the SUM Gallery.
Powell Street Festival Society is proud to present this resource in partnership with the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (Toronto) and the National Association of Japanese Canadians.
