About this Event
Join us in the Ceremonial Hall at the First Peoples' Gathering House* for a talk from the authors of .
A fireside chat will be followed by an audience Q&A and a booksigning. Books will be available to purchase from Iron Dog Books.
This event is being co-presented by the Publishing Program at SFU
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A personal and historical story of identity, place, and belonging from a Musqueam-Chinese Elder caught between cultures.
It’s taken most of Larry Grant’s long life for his extraordinary heritage to be appreciated. He was born in a hop field outside Vancouver in 1936, the son of a Musqueam cultural leader and an immigrant from a village in Guangdong, China. In 1940, when the Indian agent discovered that their mother had married a non-status man, Larry and his two siblings were stripped of their status. With one stroke of the pen, they were disenfranchised—no longer recognized as Indigenous.
Reconciling is a series of conversations between Larry and writer Scott Steedman as they visit pivotal geographical places together, including the Musqueam reserve, Chinatown, the site of the Mission residential school, the Vancouver docks and the University of British Columbia. Larry tells the story of his life, including his thoughts on reconciliation and the path forward for First Nations and Canada. His life echoes the barely known story of Vancouver and spans key events of the last two centuries, including Chinese immigration and the Head Tax, the ravages of residential school and now Indigenous revival and the accompanying change in worldview.
When Larry talks about reconciliation, he uses the verb reconciling, an ongoing, unfinished process we’re all going through, Indigenous and settler, immigrant and Canadian-born. “I have been reconciling my whole life, with my inner self,” he explains. “To not belong was forced upon me by the colonial society that surrounded me. But reconciling with myself is part of all that.”
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Larry Grant is the Elder-in-residence at the Justice Institute of BC and the University of British Columbia’s First Nations House of Learning. He holds a President’s Medal from UBC and an honorary Doctor of Laws from Simon Fraser University. He lives with his wife on the Musqueam reserve in Vancouver.
Scott Steedman has worked in publishing for 35 years, including roles with Dorling Kindersley, Larousse, Raincoast, and Douglas & McIntyre. He teaches publishing at Simon Fraser University and is co-author of Art for War and Peace. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
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*The First Peoples' Gathering House is located at Simon Fraser University's Burnaby Campus, 8888 University Drive in Burnaby, B.C. The building is just west of the SFU Transit Exchange, directly across from Strand Hall and beside the Trottier Observatory. On Google Maps, the location is known as Strand Hall Annex.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive West, Burnaby, Canada
CAD 0.00
