ABSTRACT
Stories of historical injustices against First Nations and Chinese-Canadian peoples have increasingly entered public dialogue through government-led redress efforts in British Columbia. Recently, in May 2014, Premier Christy Clark apologized in the BC Legislature for the province’s long history of anti-Chinese legislation. Following this apology, legacy initiatives involving public education and commemoration were planned, just as they had been subsequent to the 2006 apology in Parliament for Federal anti-Chinese legislation. Narratives that dominate public discourse following redress movements often portray First Nations and Chinese peoples primarily as victims, and the apologies focus on injustices as isolated episodes in the past rather than as part of wider systematic racial hierarchies that continue to impact present-day relations. This chapter features community-driven educational initiatives along the Fraser River Corridor of British Columbia that revitalize stories of relations between First Nations communities and Chinese migrants. While colonial encounters between Indigenous and European peoples have been well-documented and are being retold by Indigenous scholars in North America, little work has been done to highlight relations that were formed between Indigenous peoples and early networks of trans-Pacific migrants. The histories we recover can help develop respectful and reciprocal relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples today. This chapter also outlines the methods and technologies we have used to produce and embed sustainable learning resources within local communities and broader processes of public education. This knowledge production has been a collaborative process involving academic institutions, but with an ethical centring on communities within which the stories are rooted.
