belonging

A Hong Kong-Chinese-Canadian Goes to Shanghai . . .(by Janan Chan)

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Photo credit: Janan Chan 陳臻

Janan Chan陳臻, our guest blogger this week, lives in Shanghai. His poems are published in The Mitre (118, 122, 126, 128), yolk. (1.1), Soliloquies Anthology (25.2), Warm Milk (3), and the chapbook “Water Lines”. Janan’s poems explore themes such as identity, place and belonging (Chinatown, Montreal, pg. 62-63); feelings of mundanity and ephemerality (Cavity Sonnet, describing a cavity filling during the pandemic); and feelings of nostalgia and longing (On Track, pg. 15, Knowing Few People in Early Semesters, and 15.) Janan is a graduate of Concordia University in Montreal and Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec.

This blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

Drawing credit: Janan Chan 陳臻

In 2004, my mom and I left Hong Kong for Toronto. I was seven years old. Although I cannot recall this, she tells me I struggled in English class. My weekend Chinese lessons were no better. I could not see the use of the language, and the lessons reminded me of a community and identity I no longer wished to be a part of. In school, I refused Chinese dishes for lunch, preferring instead the white bread sandwiches that my classmates ate. Later, in high school, I would even try my best to distance myself from the Chinese international students. In university, I completed a BA Honours in English Lit. with a Minor in Creative Writing and Journalism, and an MA in English Lit. and Creative Writing.  These achievements and how I lived allowed me to insulate myself within an English-speaking identity.

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An Open Letter to Departments of Education in “Canada”

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Our guest bloggers this week are a group of graduate students with first-hand experience of EDI initiatives within a “Canadian” university. The BILD editorship has agreed, exceptionally, that they may remain anonymous. As they say, “We feel exploited and unsupported within so-called EDI committees. We share these frustrations here.”

In order to plot a more equitable future for the field of education in what is now known as Canada, we must first grapple with our history both as a country and as a discipline. In 1867, the English and French empires officially carved provincial and territorial borders into the land, renaming it “Canada.” In order to achieve their long-term settlement goal, the governments of both empires colluded with the RCMP and Christian churches to enact a large-scale genocide of the people Indigenous to “Canada”, resulting in the death of over 4.5 million bodies. Among the Aboriginal communities that remained, over 150,000 children were kidnapped and placed into Residential schools, where staff abused them and attempted to indoctrinate them into Western epistemologies and religions. The last Residential school closed in 1996.

Currently, many Canadian universities and colleges are directly connected to these genocidal religious endeavours (i.e., Jesuit missions in the University of Toronto’s Regis college; Nova Scotia’s St. Mary’s; Concordia University’s Loyola College), and enslavement projects (i.e., McGill University), or are simply products of settler colonial government policies. Canadian classrooms, therefore, have a longstanding tradition of perpetuating colonial ideologies, not least through their history of segregation. In response to these histories, Canadian educational institutions must enact a long-term commitment to actively restore the knowledges of those communities they have targeted and harmed.

In short, Canadian education systems can either continue to serve as a site of Western-centric  and settler colonial epistemologies (Battiste, 2013) or they can actively work to be anti-colonial (i.e., equitable) and anti-oppressive (i.e., inclusive of a diverse population). This letter appeals to those educators wishing to pursue the second path.

https://twitter.com/jesbattis/status/1494029064654311425
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Spaces of Belonging + Dances That Led Me Home (by Victoria May)

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Our guest blogger this week tells us: I am an established professional dancer, mid-career choreographer, and teacher with a career spanning nearly 30 years. I have danced with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and spent 12 years dancing in Europe. In 2007 I moved to Montreal. My most recent choreographic work Kiwaapamitinaawaaw (2020) was presented at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain Autochtone (BACA) at CCOV. Alongside my artistic practice, I am pursuing my MA in the Individualized Program (INDI) at Concordia University in a multidisciplinary research program. I am a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation.

social media: Instagram @viktoise

About me

Tansii, I am a Red River Métis woman with my Maternal family and community in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. I am part of a generation of Métis citizens that were raised outside of the Métis homeland and away from community, and who are in the process of reconnecting. My Paternal side is settler (Irish/ Scottish) and my Maternal family names are Vermette, Delorme, Sayer, Laliberté, Frobisher, Pepin, Davis, Gaudry, and Villebrun. 


Stella on blanket by the fire at Batoche days

My research-creation performance and thesis is on connection: kinship ties, memory, and where language lies in the body. My process of learning the Michif language, supported by dance, will culminate in a research-creation with a dance performance and video installation.  UNESCO considers Michif to be critically endangered, with only a handful of Elders that are fluent speakers. There has been an incredible amount of work done to preserve our beautiful language. I am only coming to some of the many people that have been holding strong to keep it going and am encouraged and proud to be doing my small part to contribute as a language activist to continue to build and to keep our language alive. I take this responsibility seriously and understand I am only beginning this journey to learn my language. I wish to honour and thank all those that have worked so hard and continue to keep Michif alive in the Métis community.

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Education as a place of belonging (by Bojana Krsmanovic)

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Bojana Krsmanovic, our guest blogger this week, graduated from the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English Language and Literature. She is currently in her fourth year of PhD studies in Education, with research interests revolving around diversifying and de-gendering STEM fields through the affordances of design, arts, and crafts, and specifically DIY practices and making. 

Education.

What does it mean? Apart from the multitude of definitions found in countless textbooks, articles, magazines, books, and websites – defining it as ‘the process of teaching and learning, or the organizations such as schools where this process happens’ to those which deem it ‘the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society’ which ‘brings about an inherent and permanent change in a person’s thinking and capacity to do things’ – what does it really mean to eager kids starting school, aspiring teachers, proud parents, whole cultures and societies? What are the values it instills?

What does it make us, as people?

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Where do broken tongues go? (by John Wayne N. dela Cruz)

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This week’s blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

Song credit: “Scrapes” by Bing and Ruth (2017)

2020 marks a decade since I’ve moved to Canada, and what seems like 10 long years on paper feels very much like a blink of an eye behind the screen. This realization has rendered me pensive about my journey thus far to belong in this country­­­–a journey of belonging through the matrices of culture, language, and identity. The journey hasn’t always been easy; it has been a grueling rite of passage that seems to never reach its destination. I write here and ask myself, where does it all lead? Where have I been and where am I trying to go now? Where will I, my languages and identities, end up? Where­–and when–can I finally be home?

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