In order to tell a complete story of South Asian history in Canada, it is important that we gather and digitalize as many archives as possible to help piece together what history has tried to make us forget. The South Asian Canadian Legacy Project is creating an online campaign where people can submit photos, videos, and other documentation through a website on South Asian communities in Canada so we can have a better understanding of our history and connect the submissions to what we already have in our archives to tell a story that’s more clear.
This campaign is directed at an older audience who has the media needed to fill in the large gaps in our history. We chose to use the channel of a website as seniors typically don’t have a ton of experience with technology because of the time they grew up in. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to connect with us which is why we are promoting this campaign through an easily accessible and easy to navigate website instead of a social media campaign. A website allows us to connect to South Asian Canadian seniors all across Canada as many have moved away from BC since they first immigrated to Canada.
It is a fact that our audience is not as confident in interacting with technology as those who grew up with it, which is why we made it as simple as possible for those who have media for us to add to our website to submit their media through an online drop box. Those who are part of the generation of South Asian Canadians who immigrated to Canada who have the media and knowledge needed for our campaign are less likely to be on social media than current young people in our society. Our website link will be promoted in local newspapers around British Columbia as they are more likely to see it through channels like local paper and radio. We also believe that once our campaign gets into the South Asian Canadian community that word of mouth will also be an asset as these communities share a strong bond and are all still very close which can be proven through the example of the community of Paldi.
Joan Mayo is the perfect example of lived experience and has contributed so much media through photos, videos, and other documentation to helping us understand the community of Paldi. She is a great example of the audience we are trying to reach. People like Joan help us understand that there are other communities like Paldi that exist that have been previously forgotten about through lost media. This campaign will help us find this lost media and help us better understand South Asian history in Canada.
This campaign is designed to gather and collect as much media as possible of South Asian history in Canada including visual, print, and various documentation so the content we already have through archive digitalization can be connected with the new media we collect through our audience participation. This connection between known and unknown media will give us the content we need to reach an even bigger audience and help us learn a more complete story of South Asian Canadians and keep their legacy and memory alive so we can know where we’ve been.
The website will debut in the upcoming summer with all of our pre-existing digitalized archives present and will be updated weekly with new content based on the submissions we get after they have been verified for accuracy. The submissions page will be present on the home screen so our audience can easily access the submission box based on their limited technology experience. Each month we will have a new featured community or time period to keep our audience up to date and informed on South Asian history in Canada while potentially connecting them to South Asian history that they have been previously unaware of.
We don’t have a complete history of communities, only pieces that lack supplementary information. The media and information our audience possesses can help both them and The South Asian Canadian Legacy Project better understand what South Asian immigrants in Canada went through and help us gain a better understanding of what day to day life was like for our ancestors. This campaign will benefit the entire South Asian Canadian community through new knowledge by finding the media that has been previously lost so we can tell a more detailed and complete story of South Asian history in Canada.