Credits

“Working in SNCC’s National Office as Jim Forman’s secretary gave Judy Richardson a birds-eye view of the organization. She communicated with pro-bono lawyers, handled Forman’s correspondence and calendar, and covered the Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS) line that allowed SNCC workers to bypass local operators when reporting beatings and arrests. Between keeping these records, listening to Forman’s mantra of “write it down,” and witnessing the diligence of SNCC’s Research Department, Richardson recognized the importance of documenting the facts and her own experience.

Richardson grew up in Tarrytown, a small suburban town in Westchester County, New York, to an independent mother and a father who helped organize the UAW Local at the Fisher Body Chevrolet plant. Her father died on the assembly line when she was seven, and her mother had to care for the household and become the family’s sole support, challenging, and nurturing two daughters on her own. Richardson received a four-year scholarship to attend Swarthmore College. There, she was swept into the Movement.”

Linda Hoffman has been a taiko (Japanese drum) player for 30 years. She was a founding member of Katari Taiko, the first taiko group in Canada, and of Sawagi Taiko, the first all-women’s taiko group in North America. She has performed as a folk singer/guitarist in coffee houses in Vancouver, BC, the San Francisco Bay area, and Dayton, Ohio. Hoffman has narrated two short documentary films, Petroglyphs: Images in Stone, directed by Marianne Kaplan, and One of Many—Dr. Nhan, directed by Jan-Marie Martell. On the Radio Canada show Vents d’Ouest, she read a Japanese folk story in French, which she had translated from English. She has done three workshop readings of the play Love Lies Bleeding by Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Tom Cone for the Playwrights Theatre Centre and the Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, BC. Hoffman has given vocal workshops covering speaking, singing and vocal improvisation at taiko conferences in Seattle, WA, Los Angeles, CA, Portland, OR and Vancouver, BC. She performed in the Women in View production of Lear with three other taiko players, for which they received a Jessie nomination in Sound Design. She drummed and sang at the aboriginal Talking Stick Festival in a collaborative improvisation with performers from different cultures (First Nations, Ukrainian, South Asian, Korean and Japanese) organized by Russell Wallace, Lilwat singer, drummer and dancer. Her most recent engagement was in a film, Year of the Carnivore directed by Sook Yin Lee, where she played Miss Nakamura, a principal role.

Bryce Kanbara is a visual artist/curator and proprietor of you me gallery in Hamilton, Ontario. He was a founding member and the first administrator of Hamilton Artists Inc. He held curatorial positions at Burlington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, JC Gallery at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (Toronto). He was Executive Director of the Toronto Chapter, National Association of Japanese Canadians, Chair of the NAJC Endowment Fund and National Executive member. He was Visual Arts, Crafts & Design Officer at Ontario Arts Council, Member of the Governing Council, Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, and Co-chair of the Board of Directors, Workers Arts & Heritage Centre. In 2021 he received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Leslie G. Kelen, CDEA Executive and Artistic Director, was born in Budapest, Hungary, and emigrated to the United States in 1959 with his parents, grandmother, and younger sister.  He received a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Lehman College in the Bronx, a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the City College of New York, and he completed course-work for a Doctorate in Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

In the late 1970s, Kelen began working on documentary-style oral history projects.  In 1983, he and Sandra T. Fuller (with guidance from Bob Doherty, director of the SLC Art Center, now UMOCA) co-founded the Oral History Institute, which became the Center for Documentary Arts in 2000 and the Center for Documentary Expression and Art in 2011.  He curated most CDEA exhibits; developed CDEA’s statewide education-outreach program titled: “Exhibits That Teach: Artists/Scholars-in-Residence”; and is author, co-author, or editor of five books; plus two chapbooks of poetry.

His published works include: The Other Utahns: A Photographic Portfolio (1988); Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah (1995); Sacred Images: A Vision of Native American Rock Art (1996); Reawakened Beauty: The Past, Present, and Future of the Jordan River (2011); and This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement (2011.)

In July 2003, he and his wife received the National Education Association’s Applegate-Dorros “Peace and International Understanding Award” for their work on “Faces and Voices of Refugee Youth” (2002), a free-standing exhibit, with a catalogue, and a 30-minute film co-produced with KUED, Utah’s PBS affiliate.

Masaru Edmund Nakawatase was born in Poston, Arizona, and raised along with other Nikkei in Seabrook, New Jersey. He went to Rutgers, but dropped out in 1963 and went to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After that seminal experience, most of his work life was with the American Friends Service Committee, initially as a community organizer in South Jersey; later as national staff for the Third World Coalition (TWC), a caucus of AFSC staff and committee members of color; and from 1974 until he retired in 2005, he was the organization's National Representative for Native American Affairs. He currently serves on the boards of Asian Americans United (AAU) and the Folk Arts - Cultural Treasures (FACTS) Charter School. He presided over the two boards until last year.

Michiko Sakata left Nagasaki, Japan in her twenties to work for the United Nations in New York in 1963. She was assigned to Expo 1970 in Japan where she met many Canadians. She then visited and moved to Vancouver under landed immigrant status.

In Vancouver, she formed the Language Aid for Ethnic Groups offering information, interpretation, translation, and counseling in eight different languages. She was part of the Dream of Riches project and remembers meeting Tamio. She convinced him to create an exhibition of photography to mark the history of the issei Japanese Canadian pioneer who came to Canada with dreams and aspirations to succeed in their lives across the transpacific working in fisheries, logging, farming and other businesses.

Kathy Shimizu is a sansei, graphic and web designer, artist, and community organizer. She has worked for the Powell Street Festival Society in various roles since 1991, is a co-founder, collective member, and administrator of WePress, serves on the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association Human Rights Committee, and is a member of Sawagi Taiko. She works to use the importance of history, and the power and joy of arts and culture, to build community, fight for social justice and change, and help create space for the voices of communities and individuals marginalized by our existing systems.

Paul Wong is a media-maestro making art for site-specific spaces and screens of all sizes. He is an award winning artist and curator known for pioneering early visual and media art in Canada, founding several artist-run groups, and organizing events, festivals, conferences and public interventions since the 1970s. Wong has produced projects throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Wong was the winner of the Bell Canada Award in Video Art 1992, the first recipient of the Transforming Art Award from the Asian Heritage Foundation 2002 and the inaugural winner of the Trailblazer Expressions Award in 2003, created by Heritage Canada, National Film Board and CHUM Limited. In 2005 he received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art. In 2008 was awarded Best Canadian Film or Video at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. In 2016, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts. In 2023 he received the Outstanding Artist Award from the Federation of Gay Games, and was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Car University of Art and Design (ECUAD).

Paul Wong recently completed a year-long residency 身在唐人街/OCCUPYING CHINATOWN. Inspired by hundreds of letters and familial artefacts of his late mother Suk Fong Wong, Paul Wong created intimate exhibitions, public art pieces, artist talks, events, workshops, and the website www.occupyingchinatown.com. 身在唐人街/OCCUPYING CHINATOWN was a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program in partnership with the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. The Occupying Chinatown book was released fall 2021 and was the finalist for 2022 City of Vancouver Book Award.

He is the Artistic Director and curator of On Main Gallery (On The Cutting Edge Productions Society). Established in 1986 Wong has facilitated hundreds of artists projects, most recently as the Producer and Artistic Director of the Pride in Chinatown festival 2018 to 2022. This annual event focuses and claims and makes a safe space for Pan Asian queer communities to come together and celebrate being out loud and proud in Chinatown.