Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 246: Archiving Counter-Histories — with Zool Suleman
Speakers: Samantha Walters, Am Johal, Zool Suleman
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Samantha Walters 0:04
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Zool Suleman, lawyer, writer, and co-founder and editor of Rungh Magazine. Am and Zool discuss Rungh’s founding as a national South Asian focused cultural initiative in the 90s, and how the magazine has since evolved into a platform for Indigenous, Black and racialized artist conversations. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:45
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar! Delighted you could join us again this week, we have a special guest Zool Suleman is with us. Welcome, Zool.
Zool Suleman 0:54
Hello Am, how are you?
Am Johal 0:56
Good, good, great to be able to be in conversation with you, Zool. I've run into you so many times in so many different contexts on community issues, at neighborhood house forums, and being on the board of an art gallery trying to deal with some immigration stuff, like so many different ways. But wondering if we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Zool Suleman 1:18
My name is Zool Suleman. I was born in Uganda, I came here at a young age in 1972, due to Idi Amin asking Asians to— more likely telling Asians to leave Uganda. So I came here as a special designated class of immigrants in a refugee like situation. In addition to the work I do with Rungh Magazine, as an editor, and a publisher, and a journalist, increasingly, I'm also a lawyer, and my area of practice is in immigration and refugee law.
Am Johal 1:51
Yeah. So, Zool, I was wondering if we can maybe begin with Rungh Magazine, which has really been a labor of love for a lot of people, but especially for you because you were around during the beginning, at launch and all of that. I'm wondering if we can maybe begin with you just starting about where the idea for Rungh came from, and maybe set us the time period in which it began as well.
Zool Suleman 2:14
Well, you know, in the mid to late 80s, there were a lot of trends and movements in the— kind of in the art system. There was a Black arts movement in England and in Europe. And of course, in those shores, Black means Asian, South Asian. That's the nature of that word. Of course, there was a lot of activism in America, around racialized artists seeking access to arts institutions and making art. And it seemed to me in Canada, there was a real lack of a forum or a place for some of these discussions to take place. And so myself and the co-founder of Rungh Magazine, Sherazad Jamal, whose background is as an artist and an architect and an activist. We decided to found and create Rungh Magazine. And at that time, our focus was South Asian culture, comment, and criticism. That was the byline of the magazine. So we founded a nonprofit society in 1991 in Vancouver, but the thinking about Rungh, some of it happened in Halifax, some of it happened in Ottawa, some of it happened in Toronto. And these were the cities we were in when some of the thinking was going on. And we spoke to other artists and cultural workers, and they were very supportive of what we wanted to do. So when we resettled back in Vancouver. In late 1990, '91, we decided to go forward with founding the society. And the initial goal was to publish a magazine four times a year, or print magazine. This was before social media, before the Internet download speeds were high enough to have images and magazines online. And we immediately got enmeshed into a protest and activism and events. It was an explosion of activity from '91 til about '97 for us.
Am Johal 4:08
Yeah, I moved to Vancouver in '91, from Williams Lake at the time. So I remember the city fondly in that period. Certainly a very, very different time. But wondering if you could sort of place us into the context of like, as Rungh was being launched, what was the sort of problem you were trying to solve? I guess, in one sense? And secondly, who are the kind of milieu of artists, writers and others and what were the conditions they were facing vis a vis mainstream institutions or say even artists run centers, like the broader cultural spaces, there were either closures of doors or to some degree, some layers and levels of porousness but not fully there. And wondering if you can speak a little bit to kind of what was in the cultural atmosphere in terms of the kinds of conversations, the politics, what was happening around trying to break through some of those doors?
Zool Suleman 5:05
Yeah, that's a great question and a very complex question. I think what we found initially was there was the split between community art and professional art, you know, so there was the sense that if you were making big A art, then you could possibly be in the arts institutions, or the publishing houses, or any of the other, you know, music, film, television. And racialized people at that time were not in the decision making capacity. They were not in a curatorial capacity. So the gatekeepers didn't quite understand or maybe did not even want to understand what this new group of artists was seeking. So it was very hard to find access. The other challenge was that, you know, there's sort of big A art, community art. But then there was multicultural art. And this idea that if you're in my case, South Asian, that you belong in a local ethnic newspaper, you belong in a local community center, but you don't belong, say at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Or you don't belong on the Sony music label necessarily, or anything like that. So the question really becomes, how do we then gain that access? And what was happening is the political dialogue and the demographics were shifting. So there was racism, there was exclusion, there was no understanding. And so in a way, what Rungh was falling into was a kind of activist movement that was asking for these doors to be opened. And the other thing I think that's important to note is that these ideas of South Asian then actually, in some ways were less complicated than now. Because the numbers were fewer. So you could have this rubric of South Asian and it could include people like me who are diasporic, from Gujarat, originally in terms of my fore-parents. Then Africa, then here. You can have people from Punjab directly or through the diaspora. You could have Fujians, Indo-Caribbeans, you could have a whole host of people who look like me, but could fit under that rubric. So in a way we bound it together and thought okay, let's try to do this. In terms of the milieu, there were some amazing people around at that time. Shani Mootoo, Chris Creighton Kelly, Zainub Verjee, Shahrazad Jamal, you know Henry Chung, Loretta Todd, Paul Wong, Ali Kazimi, you know, but— And we were not only just in Vancouver, we had a national advisory board. So as you head further east, you see Ramabai Espinet and Moyez Vassanji who was supportive, but was doing his own writing. Himani Banerjee, Richard Fung, I mean, this was the whole kind of milieu of what was going on at the time. So it was a very retroactive time.
Am Johal 7:52
I remember speaking to some funders along the way, that I had to be like, you know, these immigrant communities, they have arrived, they're busy getting work, and you know, they're working hard, but they're not quite you know, they're not up to doing arts and culture right now. But you know, maybe the next generation, you hear this kind of absurd stuff, because of course, you know, growing up in Williams Lake that I did, you know, that the local theater— there’d be Indian films from Bollywood playing in the 70s. And people would dress up on a Sunday and go down and see these things. So I remember seeing Amitabh Bachchan on the big screen, but it was on the Sunday that wasn't open to the rest of the public, it's sort of rented out. And these screenings happened in the 80s, the VHS happened, so all the films were being surrounded. And so there was lots of stuff happening even in terms of theater, like inside people's houses. People had brought these forms with them, but the legibility of the funders wasn't quite present. And I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to… as you were starting off a project like Rungh, how did the funders view it? Or how was their set— How did they make sense of this thing of whether to fund it or not? Because I imagine you spent a number of years not getting any arts and cultural funding?
Zool Suleman 9:08
Well, as I say to people when Rungh was resurrected in 2017. In the first few years of Rungh in the 1990s, we were funded to fail. And the funding succeeded, we failed, because we never got enough money. You know, our first grant was an exploration grant, the Canada Council had a program called explorations. So even that title tells you, like, you know, let's, it's like we're going into deep space, you know, let's explore something. And what they were paying us was, I think, around $7,000, to put out four print color publications. So you have to think about what the printing costs were. And then you know, what was left over, which was nothing. We did, of course, always pay our writers and the artists who worked on it. So we had explorations funding. We never quite fit the multicultural rubric, because we were too critical. We were too mouthy. We were too activists to fall within that agenda. And so it was actually very difficult. I think funders really struggled to figure out what we were doing. We were basically an art space, I would suggest on the same caliber as any other mainstream art space, critically engaged looking at issues, but the funders could not somehow understand that this was happening. So it was a real, real challenge. I remember we got some jury comments because we have our archive, and it was more like... I think they really struggled to understand what we're doing. Now in terms of Amitabh Bachchan and all that I fondly remember all that. I mean, you know, there's so much archival history that needs to be dug up and contexts which need to be explored. There were the Raja cinemas. I don't know if you remember those—
Am Johal 10:54
Yeah, yeah for sure.
Zool Suleman 10:55
Yeah. In fact—
Am Johal 10:56
The same guy that sold you your ticket would then sell you your popcorn, they would go up and turn the film on. It was like a very efficient operation.
Zool Suleman 11:05
And then, of course, at the intermission, you would go and buy your paan and your chai, right? Because you would have your paan, your chai, or samosa, and you'd be out and then going right back in. So in fact, the Vancouver East Cultural Center, which is on commercial drive, that space used to be a Raja cinema. The York theater. Exactly. So there's yeah, there's all this kind of legible, non legible stuff that was going on, there was tremendous amount of say, for instance, the Indian Music Society was bringing in world class vocalists, traditional instrument players, and others who were all over the city. But unless you were in that silo, you did not know. So there was kind of an all— an entire history that's missing in Vancouver.
Am Johal 11:52
Wondering if we can speak a little bit to the kind of content and themes that you were exploring in publishing the magazine back in the 90s. Like, what were some of the memorable issues for you. And some of the writers that you were featuring, at the time?
Zool Suleman 12:08
Well, the first issue of Rungh volume one, number one and two, was actually dedicated to a very significant art gathering in Toronto called Desh Pardesh. And Desh Pardesh means, you know, home away from home or a home, no home or without home. And that conference, I think, also played a very important role in defining South Asian contemporary culture in Canada, in the 1990s. So I remember in that, for instance, the very first issue, we struggled with the idea of home, what does it actually mean to belong and not belong. And Moyez Vassanji was there. Ashok Mathur. Ian Rashid. As I said Himani Bannerji, Fauzia Rafique, Ramabai Espinet, Shahrazad Jamal, Amir Ali Alibhai. These are names that may or may not be familiar to others. And I'm, I'm leaving out many. But then you know, and we used to have film reviews, literature reviews, conversations, we would commission pieces on— reflective pieces on arts and cultural practice. And then eventually, we did a food issue with a guest editor, we ended up doing a queer issue, which was wonderful, and really explored queer identity from a variety of perspectives, we ended up doing an anti racism issue and trying to challenge notions of racism. And these were guest editors who'd come in at various times. And so you could go in Rungh and basically be looking at, you know, Walrus through Rungh, or This Magazine through Rungh, or Maisonneuve through Rungh, or The Capilano Review through Rungh or Geist through Rungh. But you know, so these are some independent magazines I'm naming, some are alive, some are not. But you could have all of those kinds of art, literature, film, dance, music, theater conversations, but not coming from a dominant perspective, coming from the perspective of South Asian and racialized writers. And then the topics varied. We wanted to cover topics that other publications were not going to cover. For instance, the exclusion from arts institutions, the kinds of micro and not so microaggressions that were going on. The definitions of race and racism. The challenges of access and funding. Other publications and other venues were not, these were not necessarily top of mind to them, but to us they were. So that's what you found in Rungh, was the same world you see, but from an entirely different lens. And we were hoping that by doing that we would enliven and awaken people to what was missing in the world that they were looking at. At least the cultural world that we're looking at. But it was a very isolating space, because the mainstream institutions weren't ready to embrace what we were doing. The funders weren't ready to embrace what we're doing. The—for lack of a better term—the multi-cultural aspects of the communities from which we came, were not ready to embrace what we were doing. Because they could not accept the criticality of what we were doing. And so you had to either embrace the institution, the funder, or the source community. And if you didn't, then you are in this kind of Venn diagram, where actually the middle space is a negative space, if you imagined Venn diagrams as overlapping, Rungh was actually the negative space in the overlap of all that. And so how do you fund a negative space? Right, or a space that counters narratives, then so it's been a difficult space.
Am Johal 15:34
At that time in terms of the relationship between racialized artists and artists institutions, everywhere from artists run centers to galleries to other types of cultural spaces. You know, I just heard when Ali was here, he talked about this protest that happened outside the Vancouver Art Gallery in the early 90s, which you can share more about. But can you speak a little bit to how that criticality or frustration or the desire to be made legible inside institutions, how that played out in terms of racialized artists who were trying to make a way in, you know, beyond Rungh, there were various forms of resistances, and flashpoints that that played out.
Zool Suleman 16:17
I can think of two examples. One is the Vancouver Art Gallery. And the other one is in relation to the artist-run-center movement across Canada. And there were these—at least two—spaces I can think of. Regarding the Vancouver Art Gallery, in 91, just as we were forming Rungh and getting going, we heard of a show named 'Fabled Territories: An Exhibition', largely photo based, that was coming in from England, had been curated in England, by Sunil Gupta and another, I think, co curator. And that exhibition was being brought into the Vancouver Art Gallery. And the local artists, particularly the South Asian artists, were quite unhappy that there was this desire to bring in import work. South Asian focused work from England and other places, while totally ignoring work that was happening in Vancouver, you know largely. So while we weren't opposing the show, the exhibition Fabled Territories, being here. In fact, we were in communication with the curator and there were no issues there. We did speak out against the exhibition being here, largely that it actually showed a tendency on the part of Vancouver Art Gallery to bring in something from somewhere, rather than working at recognizing local creators, local work that was happening. And this eventually ended up in a picket, a parallel art opening at the Video Inn. A community gathering, lots of letters to the board, press releases, media coverage, naming, shaming, pointing. The Vancouver Art Gallery backpedaled, defended itself, did nothing, and then sort of acquiesced a little bit by having a small show for Vancouver based artists. And that show was called Memory and Desire, or that exhibition. And interestingly enough, Rungh has the full archive of this, everything I've just mentioned to you, we're working on an archive and posting it up. I remember going to the Vancouver Art Gallery library in the middle of COVID, to see what the Vancouver Art Gallery had about this protest. And I must tell you, Am, they have nothing. Now, it may be sitting in a box somewhere, but they have nothing. And in the interviews that I've done as a part of our archival project, one artist said to me, Zool, you're being incredibly naive. Why would the Vancouver Art Gallery document a protest against the Vancouver Art Gallery? And my response was, because they're an art gallery, they have to be responsive to the community. This was directly about them, it was a learning moment, why would they not document it? And but of course, perhaps I'm being naive. And so it's interesting that now in 2000, you know, 23, I'm now looking back at 1991 and reconstructing those histories.
So that's one layer of a documented activist intervention that lasted for about two years. Another one is in... Some of your listeners may know there's a parallel— what they used to call a parallel artists-run-center movement. So these are galleries and exhibition spaces were emerging and other artists present their work. They used to be an organization named ANNPAC, which represented these parallel galleries across the country. And racialized artists were having a very hard time entering those spaces. So at a national meeting, I believe it was in Fredericton, I think it was in 1992. Lillian Allen and myself and Shirley Bear and Sherazad Jamal and others, basically walked out of the conference. We were there as speakers, we were on a panel, we just walked out of the panel, went to a field, sat down and just talked amongst ourselves because we just could not believe what was happening in this national conference. And right then and there, we set up a group called the Minquon, which was Shirley Bear's contribution, an Indigenous word from our peoples and Sherazad Jamal and I contributed panchayats, which for those people who speak some northern Indian languages means village council or gathering circle, but can also mean gossip. So the Minquon Panchayat was formed. And within two years of this, the entire national artist-run centre movement collapsed because they could not deal with the inclusion of other voices. And for 10 years, that movement stayed collapsed until it reformed again around 2004. So these are just two examples of the kinds of interventions that were taking place, neither of which by the way, is particularly documented in any Canadian art history. So it's not just about intervention. But as I look back now, it's like, what happened to the archive? What happened to documenting this? Why are we not engaging with these histories? So this is some of the challenges that or these are some of the challenges we're facing right now.
Am Johal 21:09
That would make for a great Master's or a Doctoral research paper. Zool, I'm wondering, you know, publishing at that time, you know, the technologies have changed and shifted and wondering if you can speak a little bit to, you know, you probably had other publications that were happening at the time, but who were the people you were in conversation with in the publishing industry, and how that process worked, and how that shifted? Just through the 90s even, I think there were profound changes.
Zool Suleman 21:39
There were. I mean, production was difficult then. You know, I remember the Apple Lisa had just come out at that time, you know, the ideas of processing, speed and memory, it was very hard to do large graphic files and save them. You might remember the three and a... three and a quarter? Three and a half inch floppy disks that needed to be inserted in and all of that. So what I do remember is we would have these data files, they would physically be taken on a disk to the print shop, there would be a prep person who would download these files, create offset, printing screens, and then there would be, you know, so the production itself was quite, quite cumbersome. But in terms of a group of people to talk to, there just weren't that many. It's a challenge, because there wasn't a great ecosystem at the time. I know, Diva Magazine was around, the Toronto South Asian Review was around, you know, Encore and Vatan magazines that were put out by the Vancouver South collective, they were there. But it was a difficult time. And I can't speak too much to a milieu, because I'm not sure there was much of a milieu then.
Am Johal 22:47
As Rungh, I guess, suspended for a period of time. Would that be correct?
Zool Suleman 22:52
It was.
Am Johal 22:53
And then it came back and wonder if you can speak a little bit to what led to its suspension for a period of time. And what brought it back?
Zool Suleman 23:00
Well, so Sherazad Jamal and I published Rungh up to about 97 ish. And then a new group took it over. We call it the Gil collective, Prem Gill and Dave Gill and other family members got together and took it over, they put up two print issues, and then it died. So by 99, it was good and dead. 1999. And luckily, I took back all the boxes and files and put them in a very dry storage warehouse. And in 2004, Sherazad Jamal took on the possibility of creating a website. And that kind of just sat there from 2004 till about 2017. Every year we dutifully filed our annual registration so that the society act was maintained. And in —
Am Johal 23:45
That's a good lawyer, Zool. That's a good lawyerly move, yup.
Zool Suleman 23:49
It was a good lawyerly move. Yes. Well, because I think I just felt like should the possibility survive, we should keep it alive, you know. And so what happened next is, in 2016, we were heading into Canada 150, or I think it was BC 150. There was some event and other kinds of money. And we got a little grant to relaunch Rungh Magazine. So by this point, Sherazad wasn't involved. But I am. And we launched it as an online magazine coming out four times a year. And the focus shifted. It went from a print magazine that focused on things from a South Asian perspective, to an online magazine that looked at things from an Indigenous, Black, and racialized artists perspective. Now, to be clear, we are not saying we represent those voices, but rather we come to the dialogue from a South Asian perspective, because that's our history. So we've been publishing regularly since 2017. We've put out another, I believe, six volumes since the print magazine. So when we republished, our publishing number started from the last print magazine, just to create that continuity. So it's like there's print, there's many years of not being there. And then there's online, but the serial numbers continue from the print to now, and so we kept that continuity. The other thing is we were launched at a very important gathering, named or titled local— Sorry, Primary colors. Which was created by Chris Creighton Kelly and France Trépanier, there was a gathering of national artists, racialized Indigenous artists in 2017 to work at putting Indigenous Arts at the center of the Canadian art systems and in an art production. And Rungh was there and then Rungh was launched there. So I thought it was a nice way to— Rungh was initially launched in 1992, at Desh Pardesh in Toronto. And then it was relaunched in 2017 on Lekwungen territory, near what we call Victoria now, in 2017. So in both instances Rungh was launched within kind of incubation spaces that were racialized, and arts based. Separated by almost three decades, and with a very significant pivot in its focus. And so we've been lucky that the magazine has been well received. And we're continuing to do that. But we're also continuing with our activist roots. So we are working on the archive and the incidents I just mentioned to you, to actually enliven and activate them. So these art histories are preserved. We have a very active Rungh news section, we've been writing journalism based stories, some of them have received attention in the mainstream media, and actually have affected the flow of certain kinds of discussions. And we have a columnist at the moment, David Garneau, who writes about what he likes. He's a metis based writer, artist, Professor. Metis identified, rather. And he's been doing a great job of writing a column that looks at a variety of Indigenous arts issues, but in the pages of Rungh. And racialized arts issues for that matter. So it's been again, a very thriving scene, but the milieu is much better now. If you say like, what's that shift been? There's such a richer milieu now. There's so many people we can deal with and talk to. The understanding is so much different. And that's the other thing, I think having that 30 year gap, and committed history. So there's a longer vision, but there's no doubt the milieu has changed. And how Rungh is being embraced now is very different than how Rungh was looked at in the early 90s.
Am Johal 27:38
I wonder if you can speak, Zool, to the complexity of archiving. Of course, we have digitized archives now. We have, you know, perhaps your print copies are held somewhere at the public library or university archives, but how you went through the process as someone who's kind of a holder of that tradition. And of course, the importance of preserving those stories for a series of reasons. It takes a lot of work to archive and it takes a thoughtfulness and wondering if you could share a little bit about your thought process and what went into preserving those pieces. I'm in a building, which has the union of BC Indian chiefs. And so their archive, which is so important, that goes back, you know, 30s, 40s. Newspapers of different eras, Redwire magazine in the early 2000s. A lot of artists and activists wrote in. You know, the print copies are all preserved there, which is so important. But yeah, just wondering if you could speak a little bit to that.
Zool Suleman 28:34
It's a great question, Am. You know, the archive and the archiving process are extremely hard and funding is— one would think there'd be plentiful funding, but funding is actually really, really difficult. One area in which we've had success is we received some funding and we worked on a project named Rungh Redux. We took every issue of Rungh magazine, the print magazine. Simon Fraser University, the library and special collections have been a great partner. They digitized it all for us. We then turned everything into optical character recognition, and actually republished every print article, but on the web, and we created a special website for this. The website won a BC Museum Innovation Award in 2022. So that's been our attempt at the print magazines. Right now, we're working on this archive of this protest at the Vancouver art gallery called local color. And we're putting that together, we're working on a Minquon Panchayat archive. It's very hard digitizing tape cassettes that are 30 years old, that have started to deteriorate, posters that are falling apart. But it's been gratifying to put it up. And again, Simon Fraser University, Art Text in Montreal does artists magazine archives, we've been reaching out to institutions and also just memories, and papers and people's basements and their sheds. So it's a, it's orally documenting, digitizing, recreating, repackaging, putting it back up on the web. But then the contextual material disappears. You may have all the pieces but where are the context writing that explains all that so that when new people come in, they actually read, you know, when you go to a gallery you read didactics or you read a preface or something, all of that is missing. And so we're deep in the middle of that and we're hoping in another few years, we will have done a better job of putting these histories together. As you've said, it's a very difficult thing to do.
Am Johal 30:39
So, Zool, you know, you've got— you've had a long period in this city watching, marking, interrogating cultural moments. And enough so, just like me having been in the city, something's come back to life in a way and it's like, oh, I remember when we were doing this back in '93, or '94. It's just the great thing about growing old is you get to see how things turn out, as they say. But this question of, sort of broad questions of identity politics, how we think about them from a progressive orientation, you said the word— you used the word 'South Asian', we have various uses of that word today from South Asian arts organization to the new proposed South Asian History Museum. And of course, that brings up all of these ruptures, differences, and attempts at opening up these questions in new ways. And wondering if you could sort of share some thoughts about, you know, when you were using the word South Asian, the kind of conversations you walked into, to the way that you think about them today, because naturally with people's diaspora stories, means of arrival, colonial borders. And so this sense of what those geographic terms do, and for some people, even the naming of them, or the etymology causes problems. In the absence of other names, they're held as placeholders. And so how can we think through this in a way that kind of produces both criticality but also solidarity? Because I think these are still open questions here today?
Zool Suleman 32:16
Well, I think those are really important words, the criticality and the solidarity. And you know, how do you maintain them? I'd earlier referenced in our conversation that it might have been easier to use the word South Asian 30 years ago than now. So let me unpack that a little bit. I think the numbers were smaller then. There was a sense demographically that there was still this kind of dominant kind of whitespace. And the numbers were small enough that those who identified their roots from the Indian subcontinent, either directly, or through diasporas or other continents, could kind of band together and fight. So there was an example of solidarity, because there were a lack of numbers, right? So there was kind of a banding together and a desire to bridge across those differences, and try to work in solidarity. Now you move the clock forward 30 years later, and what you see, in my view, in that word, or that term, South Asian, is it largely serves governments, institutions, funders. I'm not sure it serves the communities the same anymore. And why is that? Well, this notion of South Asian has become much more complicated. Why? Well, the demographics have shifted, if you look at the patterns of settlement, 30 years later, at least on the West Coast, I would say that there's always been, for more than 100 years, a Punjabi identity. But that Punjabi identity has gotten much larger, more defined, more vocal, more active, and the Punjabi identity, the community, and the people born here of Punjabi background, multiple generations, as well as someone who just comes directly from there, the numbers are huge. And I think the funders, the governments, the politicians keep using this outdated word, because it still serves as kind of an umbrella term for them. But if you actually look within what South Asian is now, there are, of course, other minorities within minorities. And the word South Asian is not emblematic or responsive to these minorities within minorities. And that's why I think there's now a real challenge to this term, South Asian, and I think the issue and in say, Toronto, it might be more of an Indo Caribbean identity. Or in Montreal, it might be more of a North African identity or Arab identity or what they call a MENA, you know, Middle East and North African identity within, you know, so it's— where's this stuff going?
And I think the challenge now is to, frankly, be more specific, in my view. If you weren't from a certain geography or certain tradition, I would suggest to be more specific about it. That's one thing. Because then it's being more true to the history and the migration. The second thing I would suggest is a question that doesn't get interrogated is, what is the duty or the responsibility of the larger minority to the smaller minority? We've spent 30, 40, 50 years talking about racialized in response to the dominant white stream. We're now at a point where the question I think that's becoming a harder question is, what is the responsibility of the racialized to the racialized? Meaning if we have a group which there's 100%. And then there's a large group that's 20 or 30%, and then there are smaller South Asian groups that are 2% or 5% or 8%. What is the responsibility of the 30% to that other group that's 2%, 5%, or 3%? That discussion, I don't think is happening. And I don't think governments are frankly... know what to do. I don't think they know the issue. I don't think they want to explore this issue. So I would say to you that the criticality now, is to explore whether the responsibilities of the, sort of the minority within the minority? And the second thing would be is, then what are the solidarities within those groups? And I think it's a very difficult issue. But I think it needs to be foregrounded and talked about not to create dissension or problems, but rather to create a more authentic engagement. Because really, these larger terms, they're helping nobody but governments, funders, and, you know, a certain view of Canada, that even within this minority, there's a homogeneity. When there isn't. There's a very heterogeneous grouping there. So those are some thoughts I would have in response to your question.
Am Johal 36:46
Your critique sounds very similar to those who were around in the 90s, that related to multicultural policies, in terms of how they flatten and how blind spots and how it rolls out from a centralized place. And we interviewed, of course, Sirish Rao, who you know, as well, my friend, and he was like, he always viewed himself as Indian. The first time he got called South Asian is when he came to Vancouver. Right. And at the same time, I, you know, having worked inside of government before, when you're trying to launch a project, you want to be broad and inclusive as possible. And so these terms provide a useful container. And in the absence of something else, it can cause a difficulty in terms of where those lines drawn. And of course, we're all complicated people with multiple identities. And the perniciousness of identity is sometimes it labels us too specifically, and doesn't take into account all the complexity of movements and expulsions and arrivals and our experiences here, and how to contain that within a cultural space to be able to share the wideness and the richness of all those stories that really requires curatorial intent, and to have a kind of openness to be able to do that. And oftentimes, particularly with engagement processes, sometimes criticality, that the communications issues management side gets involved and things can kind of lose, which is the desire for a broader conversation. But yeah, these are great open questions to be had. And I think that we will see what happens.
Zool Suleman 38:29
Well for me, you know, I think what's happening is that sometimes we diminish criticality in search for solidarity, like there's a sense that, well, let's not talk about this in the public, or let's find some way to paper this over. In the spirit of solidarity, right? I'm not sure that that fixes things. What I will say is that Rungh, we're really happy that we are a space where these questions can be talked about. You know, you wrote a review for us and a book around identity politics, which we published. We have Indo Caribbean voices, we have Punjabi voices, we have queer voices, we have a series of Indigenous and Black voices. So we're hoping to keep the conversation going. But I agree with you. It's difficult. I think the challenge always, I think I was listening to something recently by [?]. At a talk she gave, and she said that it's very important to think about who's using these terms, and what purposes do they serve? Like if you actually pull back and you say, who are you, who's using these kinds of encapsulating words? And then look at for what purpose is that term being used? It often reveals a lot, but most people, of course, don't engage in that kind of analysis. So it's a conversation to be continued, of course.
Am Johal 39:46
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah I just... we all want to imagine a borderless world but we're not there yet. Zool, I wanted to speak a little bit, of course we had Ali Kazimi. We led our, he was part of our season in the fall, it was wonderful to sit down and talk with him. And I, of course, saw you when he did that masterclass with Doxa when he was launching his film about Sinixt people, Beyond Extinction. And of course, in that film, he had footage from the 90s and of course, you're a young lawyer traveling to the interior of BC, and that was the time when there was the government, you know, template agreements around bank claims. This is around the time of the Nisga'a agreement. Of course, there was the complexity to the situation with the Sinixt people which in at least in the governmental realm had been declared extinct there. Their claims weren't being recognized, there's some people— I was just chatting with Seth Klein, who we interviewed the other day. And I was, we were sharing that story for some reason. And he, of course, has known you for a long time. He said, I didn't know Zool did that work. But wonder if you can take us back to this young idealist lawyer going in trying to— Yeah, do this work? Because there was some great cable news footage where you're articulating the case to be made. It's really quite fascinating.
Zool Suleman 41:11
Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm glad that Ali made the film. Yes, I'm not as young. But hopefully, I'm just as idealistic. You know, I... When I finished law school, I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. And I clerked at the Federal Court of Appeal for a year. And during that time, when you worked one on one with your judge, I read hundreds and hundreds of immigration and refugee cases, because all those appeals went to the Federal Court of Appeal. I came here, I worked for a national law firm for about nine months, I got my license, and then just said to them, do you mind if I leave? I'm happy here. But I would prefer to set up my own refugee law practice. I think they thought I was crazy. I was leaving the largest national law firm in Canada to go set up a legal aid refugee law practice. Once they figured out that I was serious, they were happy to wish me on my way. And I would say the first 10 years of my law practice, it was a very, very active time, in addition to work for the Sinixt and challenging the Canadian border through the Constitution. I was involved in a hunger strike with 21 Iranian failed refugee claimants who went on a dry hunger strike. And there's a difference between a dry hunger strike, and a wet one, where you're drinking, you know, water and nourishment. That went on for almost three weeks until the federal government collapsed and granted a review to all of these people. You know, working with farmworkers who, under horrible conditions, working in these migrant work permits. So there was a lot of activism going on in my practice in that first 10, 15 years. And so in a way the law work I was doing was informing the artwork, you know, the Rungh stuff. But yes, I should sit down with Seth, perhaps, and have a cup of coffee. It's a part of my life that I don't talk about in the arts world too much. And in the law world, it's hard to talk about the work I do with Rungh. So in a sense, there are these solitudes in the worlds in which I function. And until recently, I didn't even want light to be shone on one or the other part of my lives together, I kept them separate. But one of the joys of getting older is you realize that that kind of separation is futile. And of course, the internet and social media makes separation harder and harder. So in a sense, I'm coming out on your show, Am.
Am Johal 43:36
I said, before we went on the air, you've like helped so many artists and cultural workers coming from outside of Canada to get their work permit. So you've been helping out on this front in a number of ways. Zool, I'm wondering if there's anything you'd like to add?
Zool Suleman 43:53
No, no, I thank you very much for creating the space. I hope the listeners go and look at Rungh. And I hope it inspires people to try to connect the present to past histories, and how they're actually quite relevant to the struggles we're facing. Not only the arts, but many other arenas and the space you're creating here is wonderful on your podcast. So thank you and to everyone involved.
Am Johal 44:19
Yeah. Thank you so much, Zool, and thank you for the wonderful work you've been doing for so many decades. So I imagined, you know, it's been going since the early 90s. That's like 30 something years. So you got another 30 something to go to double this time. That's what we expect from you. Thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar, Zool.
Zool Suleman 44:39
Thank you. Take care
Samantha Walters 44:43
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Zool Suleman. To find out more about Zool’s work and Rungh magazine, head to our show notes. If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.