June 27th, 1.00pm – 2.00pm at the Chinese Cultural Centre
Featuring: Larry Grant, Scott Steedman, moderated by Sarah Ling
This opening event is a reading and discussion of Reconciling: A Lifelong Struggle to Belong, a powerful personal and historical account of Larry Grant, a Musqueam-Chinese Elder whose life story unfolds at the intersection of identity, place, and belonging.
Born in 1936 near Vancouver to a Musqueam cultural leader and a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong, Larry Grant and his siblings were stripped of their Indigenous status in 1940 after their mother married a non-status man, an act that forcibly severed their legal recognition as Indigenous. In Reconciling, Larry reflects on his life and on reconciliation as an ongoing, unfinished process shaped by colonial history, migration, and resilience.
Told through a series of conversations with writer Scott Steedman, the book traces pivotal sites including the Musqueam reserve, Chinatown, the Mission Residential School site, the Vancouver docks, and the University of British Columbia, weaving together stories of Indigenous traditions and Chinese migration.
The event will also feature a special screening of All Our Father’s Relations, co-produced by Sarah Ling, the moderator, which explores the little-known relationship between the Musqueam Nation and early Chinese migrants in British Columbia.
Larry Grant is a Musqueam–Chinese Elder, artist, cultural knowledge keeper, and storyteller whose life and work illuminate a rarely told history of Indigenous and Chinese presence on the West Coast. 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. Born in a hop field outside Vancouver, Grant is the son of a Musqueam cultural leader and a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong, and his life has been shaped by the enduring impacts of colonial policy and cultural resilience. In Reconciling, Grant shares his personal and historical journey, reflecting on identity, displacement, and the meaning of reconciliation for Indigenous peoples and Canada. 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.
Chinese Cultural Centre Museum, 555 Columbia St, Vancouver, BC V6A 4H5
We would like to acknowledge that our festival takes place on the unceded traditional territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ and xʷməθkwəy̓əm First Nations.
LiterASIAN 2026 