Lesson 4: LEGACIES OF DISPOSSESSION
Landscapes of Injustice tells a story of the loss of home. It is about fear, racism, and measures taken in the name of security that made no one safer. It is also about the resilience of Japanese Canadians confronting injustice.
Visit our TimelineWHAT’S IN A NAME?
In this activity students explore ways in which societies commemorate, honour or recognize the past. These sites of memory can take many forms and represent a variety of purposes. How should we/have we commemorated the injustice of evacuation, internment, dispossession, and displacement? Students will explore the concepts of national memory, sites of memory and manner in which public sites of memory are named. Students will confront the stark disparity in the number of common public places that are named for people of colour, ethnic minorities, women and religious minorities.
SUGGESTED TIME: 60 MINUTES
Teaching Instructions
- Prepare a list of school names from your district, and local districts if you need more names, to assign to student pairs. Each pair needs four
local school names to research.
- Provide one copy of the Handout 4.8 What’s in a Name? to each pair of students. Have them record the names of the schools they will research.
- Students complete the chart, and the research on the schools in their assigned cluster.
- Once complete bring the class together to share the information found in their research.
- Which ethnicities are most represented, least represented or not represented?
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After groups have had time to analyze the data have each share their findings with the class using the following guiding questions:
- What are the characteristics of the most common school names?
- What possible factors may influence these commonalities?
- Does it matter who a school is named for? Why?
- How do schools play a role in maintaining common memory or national narratives?
- What can be done to reshape this narrative and honour other stories?
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Provide students with Source 4.15 Point / Counterpoint which offers two perspectives on the removal of controversial statues from public
places. This article addresses the removal of Prime Minister John A. MacDonald’s statute from city hall in Victoria, B.C.
- Assign roughly half of the class to each side of the argument. Allow 10 minutes for reading the article and finding the key points of debate.
- Students are strongly encouraged to build upon the points in the article with personal views.
- Conduct and informal debate, class discussion, town hall forum or other strategy to engage the students.
- It is not critical that students come to share one common view or that there is agreement on how we move forward with issues regarding public sites of memory.
- Debrief with journal writing, pair share, or similar.
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Extension activity. Have students search out existing sites of memory that have been designed to commemorate the injustices experienced by
Japanese Canadians in the 1940s.Students may consult the Resource Library in the Landscapes of Injustice Secondary Teacher Resources site
for links and information on a variety of such sites. Student should consider two questions in their research:
- Is this an effective way to commemorate Japanese Canadian history?
- What story is told by this site(s) of memory?