Tag: Joy Kwak

The Illiberalism of Japan’s Detention Policies: an Interview with Professor Takamura

9 min read
In this interview, I take you to Japan: an economic powerhouse, stable democracy, and a country known for its increasing reliance on migrant workers. Meanwhile, the Japanese government’s immigration laws and detainment practices also oppress and deprive the rights of many migrant workers, immigrants, illegal migrants and refugees – topics which are not commonly discussed in Japanese society for fear of governmental retaliation.

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A Pipe Dream? – Pipelines and Indigenous Sovereignty in Canada

14 min read
Although all 20 Indigenous band councils (elected leadership) have agreed to the project, there still remain many individuals and leaders who oppose the project - in particular, the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation and the Unist'ot'en camp, which have faced brutal force from the RCMP in the past, as well as injustices in judicial cases around Indigenous territory and sovereignty.

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Language as a Weapon of Imperialism: A Comparative Case Study Between Canada and Korea

15 min read
Forcible assimilation is not a mechanism of national cohesion, it is a weapon of erasure. Canada’s linguistic policies are emblematic of the degree to which the federal government has never thought of Indigenous peoples as members of a diverse Canada, rather, they were treated as subjects of an arbitrarily-imposed colonial regime. For Indigenous peoples in Canada, language is a vehicle through which to connect to a collective past that resists the colonial oppressors.

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