Cedar and Bamboo – A look at Aboriginal and Chinese relations in BC1 min read

Date: October 6 2010
Time: 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Where: Roundhouse Community Centre (Room C 181 Roundhouse Mews Corner of Davie Street and Pacific Boulevard)
Tickets: Visit Sietar for more information

Set in Vancouver and other BC locations, Cedar and Bamboo surveys the lives of early Chinese immigrants and the more recent history of complex issues of interracial relationships and marriages, multiracial identity and identification, alienation and belonging. It features four people of mixed Indigenous and Chinese ancestry and their formation of strong identity in spite of the difficulty of reconciling divergent identities, racist laws, and complexities of familial and ethnic acceptance and/or rejection. Lil’wat elder Judy Joe was “abandoned” by her Indigenous mother, being sent to her father’s village in China at age five, being ill treated and returning to Vancouver as a teenager from which she felt completely alienated. Musqueam elder Howard Grant, whose Chinese father worked in the market gardens near his Musqueam mother’s family, reflects on his experiences with both cultures. Twentyish siblings Jordie and Hannah Yow reflect on growing up “Canadian” with little information about either their Chinese grandfather or their Secwempec grandmother.