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Purpose of this project is to identify, assemble, obtain permissions, and publish up to twenty images of the social and conflict history of the China-Burma-India frontier in the 1940s; these images will be used in a forthcoming book called “Guerilla Warfare and the Anthropologists” and in as many other public ways as permitted (eg displayed on David Lam Centre’s website, projected in a virtual conference involving researchers in studies of guerilla warfare and anthropology. Assistance is also sought for the sizing and positioning and captioning of these images in a camera-ready form, ready for projection and other uses. This will be followed in FY 2021-2022 with a multi-site workshop, using these images (and others in Asia-Pacific) to appraise the use of images in research in histories of that region.

The Xinjiang Documentation Project (XDP) is a multi-disciplinary collaborative project that collects, assesses, preserves, and makes available documentary information on the state policies and experiences of extrajudicial detention of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwestern China. The Project’s objectives are to evaluate and disseminate reliable documents for the public, create a platform for individuals to share their lived experiences, provide regular updates on developments in the region, and organize periodic training workshops and speaker events. Such documentation is vital for the survival of colonized societies.

First and foremost, the XDP serves as a crucial and permanent repository for sensitive materials directly connected to the context and development of China’s ethnic policies and practices in Xinjiang. Our immediate aim is to inform and educate the public using the most reliable primary and secondary sources about the human rights violation, cultural erasure, labor abuse, and settler colonization in Northwest China. We also aim to draw from and contribute to similar efforts around the world by communicating and coordinating with international colleagues to avoid needless duplication of effort, and by collaborating with select institutions to build our project (as identified in this grant proposal). In the long term, we document the actions of the Chinese state and the experiences and memories of those in Xinjiang for future Truth and Reconciliation work. 

The project’s web portal is designed to deliver reliable, scholarly, curated source guides for the general public, by providing short annotations to orient the novice and alert advanced readers on issues of provenance and bias. By collecting and preserving the key documents in Chinese policy papers and academic articles, the project identifies certain patterns of state coercion and uncovers the impact of powerful discourse such as stability, security, poverty alleviation, and development on the lives of minority populations. The website curates timelines of key events, an extensive set of key Chinese sources (Chinese academic discourse, Chinese government sources, official media, and online sources), materials on lived experiences (including XDP exclusive primary accounts, and media segments), critical scholarship (including academic publications, human rights papers, and project reports (original XDP research), a glossary of key terms (including recorded pronunciations), translations of international research into Chinese for Chinesereading audiences, teaching tools (Infographics, syllabi and teaching plans, media resources, and visual materials), and other resources (including datasets, blog posts, and research projects).  Every item and entry is reviewed by our team for authenticity, preserved, and presented with a short annotation to aid the non-specialist. This grant will assist us, along with major funding from the SSHRC, to extend our resource base to partners, strengthen and extend the work begun in the current project, and build a sustainable project architecture to maintain and update this key public policy resource.

This project expands a DLC-supported research trip from two years ago, when I travelled to Hokkaido, Japan to interview the surviving Indigenous Ainu elders who travelled to China in the 1970s. This trip is part of my larger project called “Transpacific Indigenous Articulations” where I explore Indigenous-led efforts of transnational diplomacy, especially during the Cold War from 1968 to 1988. This project contributes to scholarship on the rise of global Indigenous rights and identity in two ways. First, most studies are focused on the Americas and Europe, as a Transatlantic engagement. Second, in turn, most of these studies look at the rise of an Indigenous presence in international institutions such as the United Nations. My project, on the other hand, reveals what was happening in the Transpacific. It takes a more grassroots approach, looking at a number of Indigenous-led trips, workshops and gatherings. I suggest that these were critical experiences in creating forms of global solidarity and exchange that turned “Indigenous peoples” from an idea into a political force and identity.

In the previous research trip, I completed 14 in-depth interviews and began to build connections with Ainu scholars. This research was the basis for a keynote talk at the University of Toronto (with my research collaborator, Scott Harrison) and a series of talks at the Association of Asian Studies, a podcast interview, and talks at a joint workshop between Hokkaido University and SFU. Harrison and I are writing two articles together for top-tier journals in Global History and Indigenous Studies. For a related project, we received a grant to conduct interviews with a number of First Nations delegates who also visited China in the 1970s, working with Professor Glen Coulthard (Dene, UBC) that adds a Canadian dimension to this project.

In this proposed research trip (during my sabbatical next year), I have two main goals. First, I will return to Hokkaido to conduct interviews with elders who were not available earlier, and organize an intensive workshop with Ainu scholars. We are laying the groundwork for a future large-scale project, which will include long-term exchanges of graduate students and faculty between Hokkaido University and SFU. I will also reconnect with historians of the 1970s, to better understand the broader social context in Japan, exploring topics such as the Ainu relationship to other racialized groups (like the Burakumin) and the Japanese Communist Party.

Second, it became increasingly clear in my studies that the Maori of New Zealand/Aotearoa (NZ/A) are important players in this Transpacific history. I will visit NZ/A to conduct several interviews and meet influential historians of this topic that I have already contacted (Miranda Johnson at the University of Otago, Linda Johnson at the University of Massey). I will also meet with Maori leaders such as the lawyer Moana Jackson and Professor Jacinta Ruru (University of Otago), and arrange interviews with several surviving members from the Maori delegation to China in 1973, including Timi Te Maipi and Tame Iti, who both remain active in Maori politics. In Otago, I will gather archival data on the history of the Polynesian Panther Party, which played a significant role in the trip to China and other Transpacific journeys, including welcoming First Nations delegations from Canada.

This work is important in two main ways. First, it contributes to growing scholarship on international Indigenous diplomacy. This project regards Indigenous peoples as active agents, explorers and diplomats, rather than the vast majority of accounts where they are framed as more passive victims of colonialism. These new narratives are important to help shift academic conversations as well as public conversations, to highlight Indigenous initiative and agency. Second, this is important to help shift the academic focus away from the Transatlantic that has tended to focus on Europe and institutional sites, such as the United Nations. My project, in contrast, explores the Transpacific and a diverse number of grassroots efforts. Groups across the ocean learned about each others’ situations and worked together to challenge the specific legacies of colonialism that each faced in Japan, Canada and New Zealand. Presently, there are almost no accounts of these travels in the scholarly literature, and I aim to make these histories widely available in publications and a public-facing website that documents these trips and their ongoing legacies.

This project will create more visibility for SFU and the David Lam Center in several ways. First, my connections with scholars in Japan and New Zealand will strengthen existing connections and build new ones. Second, this work will lay the groundwork for more substantial exchanges in the future. DLC logo will appear on the website and support will be acknowledged in all of the resulting publications.

Zheng Shengtian (b.1938) is an artist, educator, curator, and critic who has been associate researcher at David Lam Centre since 2019. Mr. Zheng was a professor of oil painting in the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught for more than 30 years. In the 1990s, Zheng relocated to Vancouver where he continued to bridge Chinese art and the international art world. He (co-)curated many influential international exhibitions all over the world, gave talks in universities and museums, organised workshops and forums, and published articles to introduce Chinese art and artists. He was also the Managing Editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, the first English-language magazine on contemporary Chinese art. Throughout six decades of art teaching, researching and curating practice, Zheng has amassed a huge collection of archive materials, including documents, research papers, publications, photographs, slides, and audio-visual materials, as well as numerous contemporary artworks. It is unique in its collection of resources related to education and art academies in China, the circulation of reference materials on international art in China, and Chinese art overseas. The significance of Zheng’s work and his personal archive is demonstrated by the digitized Zheng Shengtian Archive stored at Asian Art Archive (Hong Kong), which consists of over 1,500 scanned and annotated items based on digitization work completed in the early 2000s (See the website: ).

The Zheng Shengtian Archive research project is significant for both the study of socialist art history as well as global art exchange, it will enhance scholarly collaboration between Canada, China and other countries; and will train SFU Humanities graduate students with essential skills via hands-on digital humanities work and specific research tasks. Making the sources/documents available to scholarly and artistic communities will greatly enhance research on contemporary Chinese art history, and raise DLC’s and SFU’s academic profile.

Series of 8 seminars (connected by the topic of Bio-cultural diversity.)

The theme for this proposed offering is Bio-cultural diversity which can be described as the diversity of life in all its manifestations: biological, cultural, and linguistic. In the model, these are interrelated within a complex socio-ecological adaptive system. This diversity of life is made up of the diversity of plants and animal species, habitats and ecosystems, but includes the diversity of human cultures and languages.

This seminar series takes the local values and practices of different cultural groups as its’ starting point for sustainable living. For educators, the issue is to work to preserve / restore important practices and values, but also to modify, adapt and create diversity in ways that resonate with both rural and urban school populations.

This curriculum and resource development project focuses on the topic of bio-cultural diversity and its importance for the future of education. The topic describes the diversity of life in all its forms: biological, cultural, and linguistic — all interrelated within a complex socio-ecological system. This program will examine the local values and practices of different cultural groups as its’ starting point for sustainable living. Biocultural diversity is conceived as a reflexive and sensitizing concept for education that can be used to assess the different values and knowledge of all people as a reflection on how they live now and in the future with biodiversity. The program will include curating guest presentations and other resources both local and international from Indonesia and other locations.

This proposed combination of multimedia resource development and resource curation is linked to the future development of a blended delivery model for a field school course in the Faculty of Education entitled: Environmental Education (EDUC 452-8). The new version of this field course is also linked to the proponents' new academic role as UNESCO Chair (together with colleague and Co-Chair Dr. Wiske Rotinsulu of Universitas Sam Ratulangi, Indonesia). The course resources will involve the editing of guest online lectures from diverse colleagues and global institutions. Future versions of the Indonesia field school may be offered in a blended format, the course will include face-to-face symposia and field experiences augmented by robust online resources which may be accessed prior to International study and travel as well as accessed throughout a semester.