The University of Alberta Faculty of Law would like to congratulate our colleague Professor Eric Adams on helping to lead the multi-partner group awarded a SSHRC Partnership Grant for $2.5 million for a project entitled Landscapes of Injustice. The Federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, Ed Holder made the national partnership-grants announcement today, at Brandon University.
The seven-year research project will investigate and share the story of the forced dispossession of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War when thousands of Canadian of Japanese ancestry on the west coast of Canada were systematically uprooted from their homes and the federal government sold their property - including homes, businesses, fishing boats, cars, and personal effects - without consent.
Participating institutions led by the University of Victoria, and including the University of Alberta, have committed $3 million in matching contributions to supplement the $2.5 million grant, bringing the total for the project to $5.5 million. The project will research the dispossession and forced sale of Japanese Canadian owned property from a multiplicity of perspectives: history, geography, sociology, and law. The project will bring together 13 partner institutions, 33 researchers and as many as 100 students, to deliver a traveling museum exhibit, teaching materials for elementary and secondary school classes, educational websites, scholarly and popular publications, and public presentations across Canada.
Professor Adams, a member of the project steering committee, is also the chair of the legal history research cluster. In that capacity he will be hiring many law students, graduate students, and a postdoctoral fellow over the life of the grant to assist in uncovering how the dispossession and sale implemented a policy of legalized racism. Professor Adams and his team will examine the operative laws and regulations, the government officials that drafted and implemented them, the reactions of the Japanese Canadian community, and the unsuccessful legal challenge to the dispossession.
"I am tremendously excited at the prospect of contributing to this important research," Professor Adams says. "The dispossession of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War is among the most troubling moments of our legal and political past. The Landscapes of Injustice Project promises to help tell a story that deserves the attention of all of us."
In addition to researchers at the University of Victoria and University of Alberta, the project brings together researchers at thirteen partner organizations including, the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, the Immigration History Society, the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, the Land Title and Survey Authority of British Columbia (providing access to historic land title records), the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre, the OAH/JAAS Historians' Collaborative Committee, the Royal British Columbia Museum, Ryerson University, Simon Fraser University, University of Winnipeg, , the Urban History Association, and the Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall.
Follow on Twitter @LandscapesInjus (#1942dispossession) and Facebook Landscapes of Injustice.
Exhibition: The travelling museum exhibition will commence in 2019.
Media Enquiries:
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For further information please see the University of Victoria's media release and backgrounder.
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For interviews with Professor Eric Adams please contact: Katherine Thompson, Communications Coordinator, University of Alberta Faculty of Law at lawcomm@ualberta.ca or (1)780-492-3296.