Brown Canada
Brown Canada is a two-year community-led project documenting, creating, and sharing diverse South Asian histories in Canada. Our collective entry point is through the Komagata Maru story of 1914, when 376 Indians were denied entry to Canada due to restrictive immigration controls designed to maintain a “white Canada.”
On this website, we are undertaking an expansive exploration of diverse South Asian Histories, engaging multiple South Asian communities & experiences to document experiences including, but not limited to: Labour Struggles, Women & Feminism, Queer & Trans Folks, Artists & Cultural Workers along with Bangladeshi, Indian, Tamil, Pakistani, Mixed-Race, Sikh and Indo-Caribbean communities.
We call all writers, researchers, artists, activists, scholars, educators, community organizers, students, youth, and interested and excited individuals to be a part of this project, and to learn, tell and create South Asian history on our own terms.
Our stories are Our Histories – share yours today!
In addition to this participatory and comprehensive website, we are also:
Raising awareness about the Komagata Maru through the Legacies of the Komagata Maru website, www.km. browncanada.ca
Producing a play on the Komagata Maru to be performed across Ontario through the Sharing our Stories Tour
Engaging people of all ages and backgrounds in creative and digital storytelling workshops
Producing an educational DVD
Distributing resource booklets on South Asian histories
Facilitating intergenerational and cross-cultural dialogues
Sharing our Stories Tour Across Ontario
Over a period of two months, Brown Canada will be embarking on an eight-city tour in Ontario of our youth-led creative expressions (poetry, spoken word, plays, skits) dedicated to exploring histories of the Komagata Maru as well as our own personal histories. Following these creative expressions, we will be facilitating a community dialogue with our audience to have a critical discussion about our histories, and the implications of omitting our history. These are important spaces where South Asians, among others, can share and connect their experiences with other people, and have an opportunity to voice their reflections of identity and history here in Canada. We hope it will be an engaging and educational experience for all our participants.
More details here: http://www.browncanada.com/content.php?pg=17&pid=2
