600 Maryland Ave SW
Washington, DC 20024 Google Map
Metro: L’Enfant Plaza
Free and open to the public.
The Indian American Heritage Project at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) present a brown-bag book talk by Dr. Nalini Natarajan, Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on her new book Atlantic Gandhi: The Mahatma Overseas.
Atlantic Gandhi examines Gandhi’s experience as a traveler moving from a classic colony, India, to the plantation and mining society of South Africa and argues that his diasporic life resonates with recent perspectives on the Atlantic, as an ocean that not just transported the victims of a greedy plantation system, but also saw the ferment of revolutionary ideas.
National Museum of American History
Warner Bros. Theater
14th St. & Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20560 Google Map
Entrance: Constitution Ave.
Closest Metro: Federal Triangle
Free and open to the public
From Protest Movements to Mainstream Politics
Update 11/14: Live webcast on Ustream! Click here to view from 6:30-8pm.
In 1867, 2,000 Chinese railroad workers organized a strike by walking off their jobs to protest their oppressive work conditions. In 1965, Filipino farm workers joined their Mexican counterparts to form the United Farm Workers and staged the Grape Strike and Boycott of 1965. Since then, Asian Americans have been elected to political offices and are active in numerous advocacy organizations that address issues such as education, human rights, immigration, and electoral politics. At every moment in American history, Asian Americans have been involved in protest and in politics, in realizing a more perfect union.
What is the state of Asian American politics? Has the Asian American community moved from protest politics to mainstream politics? What does the 2012 Election say about Asian American political trends?
Join our panelists, former Louisiana Congressman the Honorable Joseph Cao, Janelle Wong, director, University of Maryland, Asian American Studies Program and Deepa Iyer, executive director, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), as they discuss the trends and barriers affecting Asian American political participation and the recent election. Gene Kim, executive director of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), will moderate this discussion.
National Museum of Natural History
Baird Auditorium
10th & Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530 Google Map
Entrance: Constitution Ave.
Closest Metro: Federal Triangle
Free and open to the public
“Latin soul comes straight from the streets of Harlem. It’s a cha-cha backbeat with English lyrics and a pulsating rhythm that makes your feet come alive.” — Joe Bataan
Come learn about the power of music to move people—to get us on our feet and across borders of race, geography, class, language, and culture. The intersecting lines of heritage in Joe Bataan’s music and identity offer a unique entry point into the lives and community commitments of the civil rights movement and a deeper understanding of the American experience. Born and raised in Spanish Harlem to a Filipino father and an African American mother, Joe Bataan symbolizes the dynamic intersections between Afro-Asian-Latino histories and cultural forms.
Join us for a public discussion featuring Joe Bataan, activist and performer Nobuko Miyamoto, and African American Studies scholar Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar. With them we revisit the political and cultural ferment and collaboration of the late 1960s and 1970s in New York City when groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords Party, Asian Americans for Action, and El Comité contributed to dynamic social justice movements, catalyzed largely by young people, which inspired cultural pride, creativity, and activism. Miguel “Mickey” Melendez, author and former member of the Young Lords, will moderate the discussion.
Reception to follow in the
Museum’s Potomac Atrium
at 6pm—8pm
Free and open to the public.
Update: This event has passed. To watch video clips, click here.
Join an important conversation about the role of “ethnic” or “culturally specific” museums with museum directors and scholars from across the National Mall and beyond. Moderated by Ray Suarez of PBS NewsHour, the program features Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Konrad Ng, director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program; Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture; Claudine Brown, Smithsonian Assistant Secretary for Education and Access; and Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Participants also include Clement Price, professor at Rutgers University and director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience; David Hurst Thomas, Curator, Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History; Philip Kennicott, critic, The Washington Post; and Congressman Xavier Becerra. Lively panel discussions will feature David Penney, Associate Director for Museum Scholarship, National Museum of the American Indian; Lawrence Pijeaux, President & CEO, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute; Helen Samhan, Senior Outreach Advisor, Arab American National Museum; Beth Takekawa, Executive Director, Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience; and Carlos Tortolero, President, National Museum of Mexican Art.
Performance artist Kip Fulbeck engages the symposium audience with a dynamic performance exploring multiracial identity. At a reception following the symposium, artist Bunky Echo-Hawk (Pawnee/Yakama) will offer a “live art” performance during which he invites his audience to suggest themes that he incorporates into a painting that he then spontaneously creates.
Poster design by Nigel Briggs, National Museum of American History
By Noriko Sanefuji (Curatorial Assistant) and Christine Chou (intern)
This year’s Day of Remembrance (DOR) was special for many reasons. Not only is it the 70th anniversary since the signing of Executive Order 9066, the action that led to the imprisonment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, it was also to honor the Japanese American WWII veterans that were recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
The program began with a keynote speech by Secretary of Veterans Affairs General Eric Shinseki (watch the video clip above or download his speech here). He reflected on the roles of Japanese Americans who volunteered in the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and the Military Intelligence Service during World War II. General Shinseki recognized their merit in receiving the award and stated that their legacy shows what it means to be an American to future generations. He said:
Download PDF
“In all my years in the military, I can find no better, no more compelling, and no more inspiring story of what it means to be an American than the stories and battle histories of the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and the Military Intelligence Service. They were premiere warfighting units ranking among the very best in U.S. military history. The legacy of those who served in those units is a tradition of patriotism, loyalty, courage, honor, dedication and sacrifice that’s as old as the American Revolution. Their’s is an American story.”
General Shinseki’s keynote speech was followed by a film highlighting the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony. Afterward, there was a panel discussion that included Grant Ichikawa, MIS veteran; Gerald Yamada, Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA) president; Christine Sato-Yamazaki Chairperson, National Veteran Network; and Doug Sterner, author of Go For Broke. The panel was moderated by Franklin Odo, former director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program. Everyone provided insights about the significance of the Congressional Gold Medal and the process of recognizing Japanese American WWII veterans.
Day of Remembrance Recap
Dr. Odo began the discussion by asking the panelists: “What does the Congressional Gold Medal mean to you?” Mr. Ichikawa recalled his experiences in the MIS and reflected on how proud he is to be a recipient of the medal. Ms. Sato-Yamazaki expressed her feelings on how the award ceremony represented the completion of a difficult, two-year effort to obtain congressional approval for the medal. Mr. Sterner explained how the medal was the highest honor bestowed by Congress. According to Mr. Yamada, the award gives JAVA the chance to make the Nisei soldiers’ legacy a living story, rather than just a historic one.
Museum visitors viewed the actual Congressional Gold Medal up close during the event. Objects made inside the barbed wire camps during WWII were also on display at a nearby education cart. Artifacts were brought out of storage for DOR, and experts were also available to answer questions from the visitors at the education carts. Representatives from the U.S. Mint were there to discuss how the medal was created.
Interns Christine Chou (Smithsonian APA Program) and Erin Anderson (National Museum of American History) talk to a visitor at an education cart. Photo by Donald Hurlbert, NMNH
Smithsonian APA Program intern Christine Chou designed a second educational cart as an interactive way of learning about daily life in internment camps. Objects on display included typical mess hall food, tools from working life, school artifacts, leisure items (like a baseball), and craft materials used for art projects. Historical photos complimented the objects to provide a more complete picture of camp living conditions. Everyone was encouraged to pick up and touch the objects. Some of the most popular items were the medical tools, including a stethoscope, head mirror, and elbow splint, which visitors were free to try on and use.
Another popular item, the dog tags of a Japanese American World War II veteran, belonged to Grant Ichikawa, who was interned before joining the military. As visitors held his dog tags, they were told that Mr. Ichikawa was actually in the museum that day to tell people about his experiences, and it was a quietly powerful moment. For visitors and volunteers at the cart that day, having the opportunity to interact with these artifacts helped foster a deeper connection to our national history.
Day of Remembrance: 70 Years After Executive Order 9066 February 13, 2012 – Written by one of our interns for American History’s O Say Can You See blog, this entry features photos of Asian Pacific American WWII artifacts.
A Day of Remembrance February 27, 2012 - A recap of the day of events written by Sarah Emerson, a fellow in the Office of Public Affairs.
Day of Remembrance: An interview with Grant Ichikawa March 5, 2012 - Blog from Noriko Sanefuji, curatorial assistant at the APA Program and program assistant in the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History.
Curatorial assistant Noriko Sanefuji interviews Grant Ichikawa, a U.S. veteran who enlisted after being relocated to a Japanese American internment camp with his family in 1942. Allowed to join the army after a need for interpreters, Mr. Ichikawa served the country proudly. In 2011, he and other veterans were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his service.
Curatorial assistant Noriko Sanefuji interviews Grant Ichikawa at the National Museum of American History, February 2012.
TalkBack Board
We also utilized the National Museum of American History’s TalkBackBoards program to invite the museum visitors to post their comments.
Question:
Today the U.S. Mint will be presenting the Congressional Gold Medal to Japanese Americans to honor their service during WII. How do you think America should honor its veterans?
You can join the online conversation by clicking here.
Free and open to the public.
Book signing after the show.
Who is an Asian American?
Kip Fulbeck’s dynamic one-man show is a personal narrative, an identity exploration, and a pop-culture analysis on what it means to be “hapa”—a Hawaiian word that Kip uses to described mixed-race Asian American identity. Famous for his shows in various colleges and other venues, Kip’s high-energy performances are filled with current events and pop culture that resonates to his audience. Just like our ongoing exhibition Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter, Kip’s performances invites viewers to reconsider their preconceived ideas about identity and race as it was defined by contemporary society. Kip’s Hapa Project is now on display in the Smithsonian exhibition Race: Are We So Different?at the National Museum of Natural History.
Kip Fulbeck is a pioneering artist, spoken word performer, and filmmaker. He has been featured on CNN, MTV, The Today Show, and PBS, and has performed and exhibited in over twenty countries and throughout the U.S. Kip is also professor of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Free tours of the exhibition Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) will start at 12 noon on Saturday, December 10, prior to Kip Fulbeck’s performance. To attend, please go to the museum lobby located on 8th and F Streets NW. The exhibition is the first hallway on your right.
If there is anything we have learned, it is that history has a tendency to repeat itself. Take the story of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The intense political and cultural debates it triggered a century ago still resonate today.
The Angel Island Immigration Station—known as the “Ellis Island of the West”—was the detention center for nearly half a million people who sailed through the Golden Gate to America. They came from China, Japan, India, Korea, the Philippines, Mexico, and Russia, among other countries. Like today, immigrants who sought greater access to the United States wrangled with those who wanted more restrictions to keep them out.
In an illustrated lecture, Erika Lee explores how the story of Angel Island transformed America’s relationship to immigration. She is director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. Her book, Angel Island (Oxford University Press), is available for signing after the program.
Mineta Portrait
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
8th and F Streets NW
Washington, DC 20001
Secretary Norman Mineta discusses his life and the events and impact of September 11, 2001. During the tragic events of 9/11, then Secretary of Transportation Mineta issued the historic order to ground all civilian aircraft, the first time this had been done in U.S. history. Mineta retired from his Cabinet post in 2006 and in that same year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. This talk took place in front of Mineta’s portrait at the National Portrait Gallery.
Click for more photos
A Personal Note from the APA Program Director, Konrad Ng:
As the tenth anniversary of September 11th approaches, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program (APAP) finds itself in a period of discussion and reverence. How may the APAP “bear witness to history”, as our colleagues in the National Museum of American History aptly frame the curation of 9/11? To “bear witness,” that is, to shoulder reflection on events that continue to be real for many people, means that we Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent must ask questions about how 9/11 affected our lives and the communities of our fellow citizens. Over the last decade, a plurality of voices and stories has emerged.
This year, we asked one witness of history to be the voice of many.
Secretary Norman Mineta was the Secretary of Transportation on September 11, 2001. He also served as the Secretary of Commerce, as a member of Congress, as a mayor of San Jose, CA and as a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents. Secretary Mineta co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and was a central advocate for the creation of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.
Born in 1931 in San Jose, CA, Secretary Mineta and his family were interned along with 120,000 of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. He engineered the passage of H.R. 442, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988—an official government apology for the internment of Japanese Americans.
In 2010, our program commissioned and donated a portrait of Secretary Mineta for the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
Bearing witness to September 11 will become a task for generations. Secretary Mineta is one voice for our generation.
To learn more about Secretary Mineta’s life, watch this informative video by Samantha Cheng:
From left: Nelson George, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Barry Cole, and Konrad Ng. Click image for more photos.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
4 p.m.
Meyer Auditorium Freer Gallery of Art
Jefferson Drive at 12th St SW
Washington, DC 20013
Closest Metro: Smithsonian Free and open to the public.
Following the screening of Drunken Master at 2 p.m., join a panel of experts at 4 p.m. for a lively discussion about the long-running relationship between martial arts movies and rap music.
Panelists:
Barry Cole, member of Hop Fu (Hip-hop meets Kung Fu) Nelson George, filmmaker and author of Hip Hop America Konrad Ng, director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Chinese Taiwanese American spoken word artist based in Brooklyn
This event is cosponsored with the Freer Gallery of Art. It is presented in conjunction with:
A Different POV: Latino and Asian America in Cinema and New Media
From Hollywood to the Internet, Asian and Latino American communities continue to be shaped and reshaped by visual media. What does the future hold? The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program and the Smithsonian Latino Center host a conversation about the history, present and future of Asian and Latino America through cinema and new media.
Film scholar Dr. Charles Ramírez Berg (University of Texas at Austin) will present an illustrated history of ethnic stereotypes and the efforts of actors and playwrights to subvert and resist them. Internet scholar Dr. Lisa Nakamura (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) will discuss the racial and ethnic assumptions embedded in the representations of race in digital media, particularly in gaming cultures. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Konrad Ng, new media scholar and Director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
6:30 — 8 p.m.
Meyer Auditorium
Freer Gallery of Art
Jefferson Drive at 12th St SW
Washington, DC 20013
Closest Metro: Smithsonian Free and open to the public.
This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition RACE: Are We So Different? currently on view at the National Museum of Natural History (June 18, 2011 through January 2, 2012).
The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program provides vision, leadership, and support for Asian and Pacific Islander American initiatives for the Smithsonian and works to better reflect their contributions to the American experience, world culture, and the understanding of our planet and the natural world throughout Smithsonian collections, research, exhibitions, outreach, and education programs. For more information, visit us at www.apa.si.edu.
The Smithsonian Latino Center is an Educational Outreach and Research Center of the Smithsonian Institution focused on ensuring that Latino contributions to art, science, and the humanities are highlighted, understood and advanced through the development and support of public programs, scholarly research, museum collections and its affiliated organizations across the United States. For more information, visit us at www.latino.si.edu.
From left: Konrad Ng, Eduardo Diaz, Lisa Nakamura, and Charles Ramirez Berg. Click image for more photos.
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