Our Story: Chinese Head Tax Mash Up

No Luck Club did the audio track and I added the visuals, archived by community television activists of the Saltwater City Television Collective.

I'll be using this video and Head Tax Blues as exhibits in talks I've been giving around the country. The synopsis follows.

Community Television and Emergence of Video Art for the Redress Movement
By Sid Chow Tan, ACCESSTV

Often artist must use what they have at hand. This is certainly true when locating film and video of historical events and nascent social justice movements. When redress activists discovered community television to be a helpful addition in publicising and organising the Chinese head tax and exclusion redress movement, it provided a serendipitous bonus for filmmakers and video artists.

The three elements of the Canadian broadcasting system are public, commercial and community broadcasters. In Metro Vancouver, ACCESS TV (Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity Society) have a video archive spanning the last twenty years of the Chinese head tax and exclusion redress movement. Including short reports and hour long programs broadcast on community television as well as raw footage.

Video from the archives has appeared several times in national news reports and film documentaries, notably Karen Cho's In the Shadow of Gold Mountain.

The archives also provided all the footage to audio tracks of Our Story: Chinese Head Tax Mash Up by hip hop recording artists No Luck Club and Head Tax Blues by Sean Gunn, a poet, singer, songwriter and veteran redress activist.

Community television will continue to play a role in the redress movement. A debt is still owed by the government to Chinese pioneer families who overcame 62-years of racist legislation to become a distinguished thread in the Canadian fabric. Hopefully, visual artists, writers and musicians be inspired by and contribute to this continuing heroic and epic struggle for justice and honour.

n.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• redress
• music
• activism
• grassroots
• outreach
• head
• tax
• families
• society
• of
• canada

[DresiriceThaSylus]

does any have the lyrics for this I could use some of the quotes for my History essay

[sergizzleyousuck]

Guys what happened was terrible but can our government apologized to them can we just get over with it. There is no rascism left over from that era.

[jodyrea]

The previous statement a quote not my words or beliefs.

[jodyrea]

I guess the woman having made that statement had no appreciation for all the "Chinaman" who perished building Canada's railway? Having been given the incentive to make life and near life sacrifices to bring their family to the "New World"

[jodyrea]

I apologise for the previous post I was merely try to reiterate that bigot of a woman's quote. "We don't want China man in Canada this is a white man country and the white man shall keep it so" Who is Canada and who is he speaking for white man? Did she ever take history lessons and is the supposed attempt of genocide of the First Nations through insidious de-culturation true and the use of the Residential schools "Canada's Solution" for ridding herself of First Nations?

[jodyrea]

"We don't want Chinaman in Canada"

[jodyrea]

No other Eurasian peoples had to pay head tax. Chinese and First Nations are Canada's only cultures with existing legislations serving to promote racism in our supposed democratic and multicultural country. They are archaic and racist.