The Editor,
I attended the showing of the Lost Years a Peoples Struggle for Justice at the Minoru Cultural Centre. The room was filled to capacity; most were Chinese.
The film, over ten years in the making, traced the life of Chinese people in Canada, United States, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia. Life for the earliest (1880s) immigrants was extremely difficult unremitting racial prejudice was demeaning, families were separated by immigration policies and war, and the coolies were taken advantage of, working underpaid, under atrocious and often dangerous working conditions. Many local residents saw them as a threat, so much so, that governments were eventually moved to enact laws making it very difficult for Chinese to immigrate and led, in Canada, to imposing a $500 poll tax on Chinese immigrants which, at that time, took years to earn.
With the passing of time, changes slowly occurred most white folks began to change their prejudice to admiration and respect for the strength and entrepreneurial efforts of the hard-working Chinese in their midst; laws changed, and generation after generation of Chinese families began to be accepted and welcomed in the social landscapes of the countries they had served in war and peace.
The focus towards the end of the film highlighted the efforts of Chinese to seek financial redress for the injustice of the discriminatory imposition of the poll tax. Prime Minister Harper was shown delivering an apology in the House of Commons for the injustice but I was left with the impression that there was still a fight on for financial restitution.
At this point I began to reflect on other injustices the maltreatment of First Nations people and the Japanese during WWII, persecution and genocide of minorities in many countries, the holocaust of Jewish people, inter-religious killings, the evil of child labor, inequalities between men and women, and on and on it goes. Where is the justice in any of this and if everyone was set on obtaining redress, even if it were possible to achieve, would it help to make the world a safer, kinder and more compassionate place?
Rather than spending time, money and energy in seeking redress for the myriad injustices extant in the world, wouldnt it be better to tackle a root cause of these problems and concentrate on freeing ourselves, individually and collectively, of the crippling, destructive prejudices we harbor in our hearts, and fight the necessary spiritual battles in coming to understand our true reality - we are all members of one race (the human race) and all live in one country, our precious Mother Earth? A new, spiritually inspired, world view of self and others is needed if we are ever to have peace, harmony and justice on this planet.
Merrill Muttart
Richmond
