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Project Director Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross, Project Manager Michael Abe, and Research Coordinator Kaitlin Findlay were on hand to accept the award. Photo credit: Alexandra D’Arcy.

OTTAWA — Landscapes of Injustice (LOI) was honoured and humbled to receive the Connection Award at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Impact Award ceremony in Ottawa in December.

The prestigious Impact Awards recognize the highest achievements from outstanding researchers and students in social sciences and humanities research, research training, knowledge mobilization, and outreach activities, funded partially or fully by SSHRC. The finalists are selected by a jury composed of renowned experts from academia and private, public, and not-for-profit sectors.

In particular, the Connection Award recognizes an outstanding SSHRC-funded initiative that facilitates the flow and exchange of research knowledge within and/or beyond the social sciences and humanities research community. It is given to an individual or team whose initiative has engaged the campus and/or the wider community and has generated intellectual, cultural, social, and/or economic impacts.

Stanger-Ross is the first faculty member at the University of Victoria (UVic) to receive an Impact Award. He accepted the award on behalf of the project’s multi-sector leadership team; Nikkei National Museum director/curator Sherri Kajiwara, Governor General Award-winning teacher Greg Miyanaga, Royal Society geographer Dr. Audrey Kobayashi, UVic history alumna Kaitlin Findlay, and museum curator Dr. Yasmin Railton.

“This award validates the work that went into the human relationships behind this partnership,” Stanger-Ross states. “Landscapes of Injustice was a community. We realized that we could work together to find answers to common questions and that by doing so, we might challenge historical and systemic injustices more powerfully than any of us ever could alone.”

Landscapes of Injustice logo.

The Honourable Madam Justice Maryka Omatsu, Canada’s first East Asian woman judge and member of the National Association of Japanese Canadians’ BC Redress Committee, comments, “The Japanese Canadian community owes a large debt to Landscapes of Injustice. Their original research on the dispossession has had immediate, personal meaning to many of the victims and their descendants. The database they created is also an indispensable resource for the Japanese Canadian community in its ongoing talks with the BC Government for redress.”

From Landscapes of Injustice, a new research network has emerged, Past Wrongs, Future Choices, with Stanger-Ross and Kobayashi as project co-directors. They have gathered together former members of the LOI team and dozens of new participants spanning five continents.

This initiative will be the first ever to connect records related to the mid-20th century malevolent treatment of people of Japanese descent in allied countries throughout the Americas and the Pacific.

“This powerful public history project has changed the national conversation about what happened to Japanese Canadians in the mid-20th century and why it matters today,” states Alexandra D’Arcy, Humanities Associate Dean of Research at Uvic. “By choosing connection and cooperation, the research and resources developed by the Landscapes of Injustice team—and now those from Past Wrongs, Future Choices—will have a profound impact for generations to come.”

The Landscapes of Injustice initiative has garnered several prestigious awards over the years, including the Canadian Race Relation Foundation’s 2018 Award of Excellence, BC Heritage’s 2021 Outstanding Award for Excellence in Education, Communication and Awareness, and UVic’s 2022 Reach Award for Excellence in Knowledge Mobilization.

Their capstone exhibition, Broken Promises, was shortlisted for a 2021 Governor General’s award and received an Award of Excellence from the British Columbia Museums Association. The SSHRC Connections Impact Award was a wonderful note to end.

Written by Michael Abe with files by Philip Cox.

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To learn more about Landscapes of Injustice visit, www.landscapesofinjustice.com.