May Chiu

DOUG MILLER 0:00

Oh, there's that nice lady, yes. Okay. Well, welcome. I'm Doug Miller here today in Montreal with the Canadian anti-apartheid Activist History Project. And with me is May Chiu, and May, I apologize for misspelling your name in the invitation in the first place, but we got it right now. Gwen Schulman, both in Montreal, we're all in Montreal today. May, I would ask you to confirm that you've read the consent form and that you understand that we're recording this for archiving purposes, for education purposes and educational purposes. So, we're, do agree with the terms of that?

MAY CHIU 0:45

Yes, I consent.

DOUG MILLER 0:47

No problem. Perfect, perfect. Maybe we it's really interesting to be we're finally back in Quebec with this project, and getting a lot more going here and you're, you're really Quebec rooted in a sense. So, I believe if you could just tell us a little bit of where you're from and what background you are and what led you how you eventually came to understand that something was out there called apartheid and that you wanted to act on it.

MAY CHIU 1:17

Okay, so I, I arrived like my family immigrated from Hong Kong in 1971 and we immigrated, we landed in Trois-Rivières, where I grew up. And I think that's some of my interest about the apartheid struggle comes from my experience as a racial minority, growing up in Quebec and in a small town as well. You know this thing about wondering, like, where I fit, and trying to assert that I fit while, while receiving, like, loud messages that I did not?

Yeah, and you know, I have to say, I have to admit that I was extremely, like a very, very immature young person. I remember when I went to CEGEP, I went so, so sorry, just to backtrack a bit, I'm not a child of Bill 101, so I grew up going to a very, very small English school in Trois-Rivières, and then, like all the end, after we I graduated from high school, I left.

So, I went to Lennoxville for college. Lennoxville, Champlain College in Lennoxville, and there, I think that, you know, it was my first time living away from home. I, you know, and you know, I had roommates with all the other like young, 17-, 18-year-olds who went wild without parental supervision. You know, living, living by themselves for the for the first time, and I was extremely immature. It was also one of the first times that I, I had, I made friends with a lot of other well, especially, I would say Black students. But again, I was so dumb and immature, and I did, I have to admit, like, I made racist jokes all the time, saying, “Oh, it's funny. I'm just joking. I'm just joking”.

And then after Champlain, I came to McGill University and I just wanted to do something useful, you know, apart from studying and it just so happened, it was a timing you know, McGill and other universities were in the heat of huge student mobilization against South African apartheid and organizing divestment campaigns.

And so I think part of my, my impulse for joining the anti-apartheid student movement, other than the fact that it was like the trendy thing to do, was also, you know, trying to make up for all my like immature, stupid jokes you know about Black people and about other minorities.

DOUG MILLER 4:34

Excuse me. Excuse me. What year did you start at McGill?

MAY CHIU 4:39

That's a good question. 85 or 86, no, I think it was 86. Okay, thank you, yeah. And I remember, like, even walking, like one of my first times walking through campus, you know, there were huge demonstrations in front of the administration building. And again, like it, it was something, it was also not something that I like, like, naturally embraced either. I remember going to demonstrations and being always so painfully aware that I was like, the only Asian face in a sea of white faces at these demonstrations.

But I just found that in getting involved with the movement and organizing, I had a lot more common with progressive-minded white students than, let's say, for example, I also remember, you know, my first year McGill, there were other Asian students who would try to befriend me, but they were all from churches. And I, you know, they were very friendly, but I was not like a religious person either. And I just, you know, just like the more I learned about the issues in South Africa, the more that I learned about actually intersectional oppression, and especially class oppression.

It just like spoke so loudly to me, and I think that it gave me a context to understand my personal experience. You know, growing up as a minority in Trois-Rivières, my father being a very underpaid restaurant worker, and growing up like I just, I didn't know how to frame it. There was a shame in being so different. I understood that we're not as wealthy as the other students whose parents had cars and they were able to go to after school activities.

And, you know, I just, I think my experience also of seeing how marginalized my family was, like other than other than being ashamed of like my difference. It wasn't until that when I learned about the complexity of issues that shaped and defined South African apartheid. I was able to identify and be able to understand more on an intellectual and conceptual basis, how that spoke to my experience of being a minority in Quebec.

DOUG MILLER 7:23

Wow. What a story, tremendous.

GWEN SCHULMAN 7:26

So maybe now you're at McGill now, and you talked about, you know, attending demos, and can you kind of take it from there? This is where you and I got to know each other. But do you remember kind of how you got involved in this, what was called, I guess, the South Africa Committee at that point.

MAY CHIU 7:44

I Well, when I first joined the South Africa Committee was led by two very charismatic men, actually, Guy Thompson and Steve Miller. And actually, you know, there was a part of the thing where, you know, there was a romance around student leaders. They were, of course, really awesome leaders, very competent. They had the political vision. They had the audacity and the organizational skills to be mobilizing masses and masses of students. And so there was that admiration of them. And then also, but I think that even, you know, admiration doesn't last very long. You can't sustain your implication just by, you know, hero worship. And it was really like, you know, meeting people like you Gwen, and even like, you know, and you know, sometimes I remember people like criticizing, like, one of the criticisms of the student anti-apartheid movement was that it was mostly white, and McGill was like mostly privileged students from Toronto who grew up with a lot of privileges.

But again, I would still say that it takes a lot to kind of, how do I say it does take something. It does take. It does take, I don't want to say courage, but a sort of affirmation, to be able to recognize your privilege and to be able to take sides like just pick a political side and even against, in terms of fighting against your other class. You know people from your class and from your background and you know I know. I know for a fact that you know, some of the people I, I befriended like they would, they would tell me about, like, big family discussions and disputes because they chose to take a side against legalized racism,

GWEN SCHULMAN 10:17

And then you don't win any popularity contest by taking that position

MAY CHIU 10:22

Exactly, exactly, and somehow I found that I had more affinity with those people then again, you know, with other racialized people who didn't really, you know, care about political issues, another group of students that I, who I really admire, were the members of the Black Students' Network. You know, they were like such strong allies, and I understand, and I learned so much, also from their type of activism.

Like, one of the stories I still tell is a story of, you know, like, again, in general, the mainstream anti-apartheid movement in Canada was very, very white, and I remember talking with white student activists who asked the question like, oh, How come, like, the Black community aren't more involved. And I learned from one of my Black friends who was like appalled at this insinuation, saying, “Well, we've been supporting our South African brothers and sisters in our churches, in our picnics, in our gatherings for decades. You know, just because we're not involved in the white movement does not mean that we're not involved and we're not supporting in our neighbourhoods, in our families, in our gatherings”. And yeah, so I just like, I really, really admire the, you know, the people who had, like, the Black consciousness, and people who were shaped, shaped by, you know, Black consciousness and that movement,

DOUG MILLER 12:15

absolutely, and

GWEN SCHULMAN 12:19

it's amazing that you bring this up right at the beginning of the discussion. It's such it's in great contrast to a lot of the people we've interviewed, where this is a question that comes up at the end. And the question is something like, you know, okay, you've talked about your experience and the movement and things that were, you know, truly special about the movement.

But now let's talk about the problems with the movement. Did you see any was there racism in the movement? Was there sexism within the movement? So that tends to be the end of the conversation. And there are a lot of people who, to this day, don't recognize that there was racism within the anti-apartheid movement or sexism. A lot of the people just were like, oh no, no, you know. And no, you know. It was all just one big happy family, and it's very you know. So, it's very interesting that you are coming into this immediately, from that perspective of there was a very complex movement filled with contradictions and hypocrisies also.

MAY CHIU 13:18

Well, if I could also share, like, two things that also like two, like, really deep learning moments for me. One was also seeing, oh my God, like the privilege of the funded anti-apartheid actors and institutions. And I saw that like firsthand, like I understand, you know, at that time, the Canadian International Development Agency existed, and basically it was a treasure chest for, you know, to promote, like human rights activists, which, like, in hindsight, was a form of neo-colonization and the neo-imperialism in the way that it operated, and in terms of the positions and the type of organizations that they would choose to fund.

But I remember, you know, like being in the anti-apartheid network, and Quebec was very strong. I have to admit, the unions were there, the churches were there, students were there, NGOs were there. But funding, funding was such a big like, they put so much energy, like demanding that the government fund their activities.

And there was at one point, a national coalition called Back in the Frontline States, and I remember you were very involved, Gwen, so I got the opportunity as a student representative to go to a conference. I think the conference was, was in the most, no it was in Zimbabwe. And there I kind of so, so, so the thing that, like the idea was of backing the frontline states was, you know, like the coalition of Canadian institutions and organizations that were providing solidarity support to, you know, sister organizations, like farm organization, farming organizations and local unions and women's organizations. You know, it was, there was an attempt to build solidarity and to have a program where the Canadian counterparts would be on the ground, concretely supporting, you know, the partner organizations in the frontline states.

And I remember going to this conference, and actually I caught a tail end of a meeting by the white organizations only because, of course, the Black organizations, the southern organizations, were not invited to all the meetings. But there were some closed meetings. And in the closed meetings, it was budget, I remember, like, catching a whiff about the budget and, and, you know, the white organizations complaining about, you know, the lack the small per diem that they got, and the entire thing, like the lodging, the travel, everything was, you know, all the North American or the Canadian participants. It was all paid for, and then they got per diem.

Whereas I, and I understood that the South Africans, Southern Africans didn't, were not invited to talk about the budget or to participate in budgetary decisions, and I understood also that they did not receive per diems. It was kind of like taken for granted that what we're doing this for you and so be happy.

And like, Oh my God. I was so appalled at that this passes for solidarity. This was one like learning moment for me, when I really hit home the hypocrisy of like north, south, so-called solidarity movements. And then the other one was, you know, just learning about Indigenous struggles like the anti-apartheid and it was at a huge national anti-apartheid conference in Vancouver. And I think somebody know, an organizer had the foresight to make the links with Indigenous struggles. And then they invited. Was his name. Sorry, like I said, my memory is not good, but somebody from the count the, what is the First Nations?

GWEN SCHULMAN 17:54

Georges Erasmus

MAY CHIU 17:55

Georges Erasmus was invited to be the keynote speaker. So, the entire conference, like, people like, from Southern Africa. They were like, high leaders to attend and, you know, lots of like, like, leaders of Canadian organizations were there and the so. So, the entire conference was about how to fight apartheid, how to back the frontline states. But one keynote speaker was Georges Erasmus, and again, like sitting there listening to him talk, and I can't, of course, he was very gracious speaker, and he spoke about the origins of the inspiration of South African apartheid, which came from the Canadian reservation system.

But it wasn't the content of what he said. It was more like it was more the tone and the emotions that he conveyed, and I understood instinctively that he felt very, very sorry that here was this so much investment in fighting apartheid on another continent.

And I'm not saying that it was not a struggle that had to happen, but it was such pure hypocrisy for the Canadian government to turn their backs on the apartheid system under which Indigenous peoples had lived and continue to live, yeah, so, so I just, I just want to share, like, those two learnings that I received.

And I'm really again, like, I'm really, really grateful that I did spend time in the apartheid struggle. It was for justice, but it was just that there's so many tangents, yeah, and I think that because all these angles were not properly taken care of, you know, when, when apartheid fell, I think a lot of people just thought, okay, this is it. We've done our job. Everything's fine, and we know that everything was not fine. And I'm not saying that.

You know another thing that, in terms of having, you know, a lot of these so-called, like institutions that were funded to fight apartheid in South Africa and to back the frontline states. I like I also saw that there was a lot of like left imperialism in terms of, you know, what choices and what models and what strategies South Africans should be making, and I think that that also contributed to, like, post-apartheid South Africa.

GWEN SCHULMAN 20:48

Mm, hmm, yep, it was in a lot of ways exactly that laying the groundwork for kind of neoliberal, you know, well, first of all, neoliberal transition for South Africa. But yes, that we did not. We were discussing this in another interview recently, that it wasn't a decolonial movement. You know, the anti-apartheid movement did not have that analysis of a decolonial movement, which would not have allowed it to ignore Indigenous struggles in Canada. Had there been that broader understanding and analysis we would have, by definition, had to have been working harder here, fighting our own colonial structures and racism and all the rest of it. And so, it was an anti-apartheid movement, but it wasn't a decolonial movement. So, you know, everything you say really, you know, it's totally resonates with that. It's and I'm not saying everybody in the movement. There were people in the movement who had very sophisticated analysis and decolonial, but the mainstream anti-apartheid Movement didn't, and I completely concur with you, the whole financing, and as soon as organizations were accepting money from CIDA and all the rest of it. The movement was depoliticized like that. Then it becomes a job, and you actually have a vested interest in keeping it going on some level, because your paycheck is at the end of it.

So, we saw a lot of that, and I feel like, certainly we lost a lot of allies in that process where, you know, they weren't even talking about liberation anymore. In fact, less and less working with the liberation movements, and more and more with NGOs, many of which had been constructed by Canadians and plonked down, and those became the partners to work with, as you were alluding to, with the whole frontline state campaign.

DOUG MILLER 22:37

Well, I see, I see what you said, Gwen, about how May went, very much to our later questions and, and, and I think there's still more to explore that way, but I'd like to get back to getting at McGill and some of the nitty-gritty of being an activist. If we could. The two of you, I'm sure there's the whole thing about pamphleting and organizing demonstration, I don't know you guys were the boycott and disinvestment. Can you just talk a bit about some of the more nitty-gritty kind of what was a militants life like?

GWEN SCHULMAN 23:13

They spent a lot of time at a photocopy machine.

DOUG MILLER 23:19

Did you? Yeah, you guys missed the Gestetner phase. Then you went right past

GWEN SCHULMAN 23:23

Photocopy, for endless hours at photocopy machines.

MAY CHIU 23:28

Well, yeah, that was another, like, a non-technological world of activism, right? Gwen, lots of like, postering on the streets. Like we didn't have Facebook. Like, even today, my kids are like, “Well, you guys didn't have cell phones when you were young?”. And it’s like,

GWEN SCHULMAN 23:45

There was no email, there were no computers,

MAY CHIU 23:50

Yeah, and, but that's how we built, like, I think, really good friendships, because we met in person all the time, absolutely, yeah.

GWEN SCHULMAN 24:00

Yeah. It built very strong ties. You know that constant human contact is a very different way of organizing, and I think it's a more sustainable way. I've really noticed the demise of a lot of organizations from that time, as soon as everything was organized through email and Facebook, the actual social interactions and cohesions of the organizations have completely evaporated.

DOUG MILLER 24:28

On that score, you're at the McGill campus. What were your relations with, for instance, the Francophone students, what were your relations with NGOs, the churches, the other groups and the Black community? For that matter, you've talked about learning from them, but how did it go with those interactions?

MAY CHIU 24:51

Well, you know, even I started by saying I was not a child of 101, and I've always actually regret. It that because I, like, I was not able to communicate in French until, like, in the past 10 years, I really, really, like, lived a sheltered life in the Anglophone community. But during the, I remember there, you know, and the student movement in Quebec also changed a lot.

There used to be, like the French university students used to be organized. I can't remember the name of it, Gwen, but you know, like every meeting, sorry, not every meeting, every year, at the start of the year, the different representatives of the French student organizations met because they were organized in a big coalition. And I remember, oh, this was like, so embarrassing, because somebody said to me, you've gotta go and ask them to endorse the anti-apartheid and divestment position, and so I remember going there, like, speaking in really, really horrible, broken French, you know, to this group of students. And I remember some of them, like, really laughing in my face. And the President was like, oh, just like, okay, yeah, we approve. But in terms of the like the Francophone students, like we network with the JICA, you know, remember, Stéphan Corriveau tried to organize youth against apartheid. That was a really great movement.

GWEN SCHULMAN 26:39

Area based at UQAM, I think in particular, no?

MAY CHIU 26:43

But, you know, because of my language barriers, I have to say like, there was not like we organized demonstrations together. We did we, we did organize things together. And another thing that I remember in terms of like, so demonstrating was one of our main forms of activism, and we did a lot of that. But one thing that, in retrospect, like, we always like gave us like a good excuse for the low turnout, right?

GWEN SCHULMAN 27:20

The weather,

MAY CHIU 27:22

Yeah. Oh, it's lunch time. Everyone's having lunch coming. Oh, everyone's going home for supper, so that's why they didn't come. Oh, it's too nice. People are enjoying the sun, always too cold. Oh, my God, that we weren't discouraged. We would like to feel like we're with every freaking poster we put up on a post. Were like, oh, someone's gonna see this and they will come.

GWEN SCHULMAN 27:46

Oh, my God, may I remember demos where we were like, five people marching down the street.

DOUG MILLER 27:52

Now, where would you be demonstrating, and against whom and what?

MAY CHIU 27:57

A lot of the times it was in front of Place Ville Marie, where the South African consulate was located,

DOUG MILLER 28:03

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah.

MAY CHIU 28:06

There were a lot of campus demonstrations as well. In front of the administration building, there was also, I remember, you know, because so I started at McGill doing a general arts degree, and then I went back to McGill to do my law degree.

And I remember that when doing my general arts degree, like one of the issues that we protested was someone like a law professor, or some like conservative students, like cons constantly inviting the South African representative to come and speak at McGill. So, we did, like enough protests against that.

And I remember, like one of the one of the sympathetic pro-South African professors was Irwin Cotler, who was in the law faculty, and I remember, then, when I became a law student, I was like, so, like, you know, I mean being a first year student or second year student, you didn't dare to, like, really attack his integrity. I didn't have the tools, I didn't have the arguments. But just remember my frustration as saying, well, why is this guy given so much honours and privilege when he squarely was on the side of apartheid?

DOUG MILLER 29:31

Yeah, even today, yes,

GWEN SCHULMAN 29:36

Yes. And do you remember Shingler? No, yes, no. In poli sci he was also like, sort of quite the advocate of apartheid, and worked very hard to undermine the work that we were doing at the Southern Africa Committee. He was in, you know, really defending the right of Glenn Babb, who was the ambassador at the time, to come speak at McGill, and that it. All a freedom of speech issue, and he kind of blocked us at every turn.

MAY CHIU 30:07

And then, I mean, there were, like, unfortunately, handfuls and handfuls of pro-apartheid students, you know, who wanted to defend the status quo. And I remember doing a lot of tabling, right? Yeah. Our, our activity was to, like, educate our fellow students and get,

GWEN SCHULMAN

Oh, my God, all the tables, yep.

DOUG MILLER 30:32

Oh, these are great stories. This is fantastic.

GWEN SCHULMAN 30:34

All our little handmade pamphlets, cutting and pasting and photocopy.

DOUG MILLER 30:38

Where, did you ever become part of the Amandla initiative?

MAY CHIU 30:46

I think I was there in the formative years. You were, yeah, and I, like, never mastered. I tried to become a technician. I never was able to do that. I think Amandla probably fired me.

GWEN SCHULMAN 31:02

No, that is not what happened. Okay, scratch that from the record.

MAY CHIU 31:08

But I know I was involved. I remember, like, you know, going, like, on Christmas Eve with Aziz to the studio because the show had to go on. Everyone else was out of town, so there would be, just be the two of us in a big, empty building. I mean, there was one custodian who would let us, who let us inside, but we Yeah, so I remember those days,

DOUG MILLER 31:34

Quite scary, that that whole studio walking through that long corridor of albums and things, I felt I was in a trap that I couldn't get out of.

GWEN SCHULMAN 31:43

The fire trap, for sure. That makes for, also the, you were also the coordinator of the Southern Africa Committee, I think, for a year, right?

DOUG MILLER 31:53

And at what point does Aziz and GRILA become a reality or a presence?

MAY CHIU 32:01

I think that, yeah, probably during the time that South Africa Committee changed, because we changed the name, remember Gwen It used to be the South Africa Committee, but then when we understood the South African strategy of attacking like models of successful Black-led governments on its neighbouring borders. We changed the name to Southern Africa Committee so that we could broaden our mandate to support again the Southern African states. And I think that that was around the time where we met up with GRILA and Aziz.

GWEN SCHULMAN 32:44

It was actually with ,when we were invited to go on the southern African tour. So, when Aziz and Martha Gordon and I and Marie-Hélène went to meet the youth wings of the ANC and SWAPO in Zambia, what year? Zimbabwe and Mozambique. So, Aziz was the student from, so when we came back, we did a lot of organizing together and after that, like we really got involved with GRILA at that point.

DOUG MILLER 33:12

What year was that tour?

GWEN SCHULMAN 33:15

I think 87

DOUG MILLER 33:18

And that's the same year you would have established Amandla then.

GWEN SCHULMAN 33:23

Yeah, again, the timeline is a bit fuzzy. I can never hear, but that's how we met Aziz through that Southern Africa tour. And when we got back, we did a lot of organizing together. And then eventually, through that, you know, the connection with Gand you came and everything got really strong.

DOUG MILLER 33:44

Yes, yes. And Aziz Fall, just for the listeners, is another interview subject that will be meeting in the near future. And GRILA is a Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa and of course, apartheid would have been a focus of their interests at that point.

GWEN SCHULMAN 34:04

And GRILA produced Amandla for years.

DOUG MILLER 34:08

Yes, in fact, the Amandla was sort of considered a collective of the GRILA for a long time. Umbrella, yes, okay, well, then back if, unless you have more of those stories of battles fought and energy spent.

MAY CHIU 34:26

I think that in terms of, you know, student activism, we did network a lot with the student anti-apartheid movement from Concordia, as well as from Kingston. Remember we would go to each other's demonstrations.

GWEN SCHULMAN 34:44

Yes, yes, I distinctly remember us sleeping on some hardwood floor in somebody's house more than once in Kingston.

MAY CHIU 34:55

Yeah, because since, um, I think McGill was the first university. To successfully divest and so we became like a model for the other universities.

DOUG MILLER 35:08

Well, that's interesting. Sorry, you slipped that in, but we didn't really talk much about that whole operation, the disinvestment campaign. Could you give us a little bit more background on that?

MAY CHIU 35:20

I have to admit, I think I joined at the tail end of the of the strongest wave of student activism, and I remember that what the students did was that they organized. They were really, really smart. The student leadership placed themselves in strategic governing positions at the McGill University.

So, they were they had student representatives at the Board of Governors. I remember, in turn, there was an election for the Student Union and the anti-apartheid activists, they ran on a slate to try to take over as many positions as possible, so they would have a majority on the student council. And, you know, in different faculties, like, you know, whenever there was a place for student rep, the student leaders would try to run and get into that position, so that they would be in every sector of McGill universities in order, in order to be prepared whenever the question of divestment, whenever votes for divestment, was put on the table. And I remember Amy Kaler was, yeah, yeah, so eloquent. She was such an eloquent leader.

GWEN SCHULMAN 36:47

That's exactly what happened. And it's true that was all kind of – we arrived at the tail end of that level of organizing. Yeah.

DOUG MILLER 36:56

What was the name of that person? Amy Kaler. Amy Kaler, okay, yeah, interesting. And so, so, so, in fact, McGill did disinvest that sounds astounding, given what I know of McGill today, yeah,

GWEN SCHULMAN 37:10

But that's right. And then we would as, as members of the McGill South Africa Committee, we were invited to go and co-organize with other universities.

DOUG MILLER 37:21

And did you work with the Dawson because I know they had a little campaign going at Dawson College.

GWEN SCHULMAN 37:26

Do you remember any work with I don't really remember any work with the CEGEPs, do you?

MAY CHIU 37:31

Yes, I remember there was a couple, like they were a couple, like a literal couple, who were students, and they came to our meetings and, but I can't remember their names.

DOUG MILLER 37:43

I’m so sorry. Well, that's that is a very significant campaign, and of course, that's of great interest to the Palestinian solidarity movement today. We've been asked many times about how that works. So this is good, good, good testimony. Interesting, the taking positions in wherever they can. So they're there to talk to the issue, if ever it comes up, and confront the proponents wherever they want to push it

GWEN SCHULMAN 38:08

May, do you remember so as part of this whole thing, do you remember that the administer, one of the administration buildings was occupied in that the in that for those towards those days of the final vote to divest there were some anti-apartheid activists, and again, we were just coming into it at the time, but I remember that a floor of the administration building was occupied. Do you remember that?

MAY CHIU 38:31

I don't remember what was happening inside, but I remember there was one strategic vote where people were outside, like banging on garbage cans and I and of course, it was to drum up support for, you know, the work that was being done inside the building. So there might have been an occupation inside. I was on the outside.

GWEN SCHULMAN 38:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that too,

DOUG MILLER 38:56

Fantastic. And, well, I'd like to go jumping back to that other reflection that we were making on the, what we see about the connection with the native folks and the feminist movement and the Black community. It's interesting now that the colonial vocabulary, the kind of vocabulary of colonialism and settler has become much more acceptable and standard in the vocabulary here in North America, even amongst the mainstream people, but certainly on the liberal left side and it shows a certain evolution as both on the one side of the community of folks on the white side, but more importantly, the Native community, is standing up and becoming much more articulate and gaining their allies and pushing their strategies forward. That's my reflection on how, it's impressive. Never heard that language ever in the old days.

So any other reflections about what well that, but also in terms of yourself, how do you think you gain from all that, and what did you how have you changed and evolved as a result of all that?

MAY CHIU 40:21

For me, it made me smart, bluntly, like I don't walk around stupid anymore, hopefully, and I think that it really gave me an anchor to be doing what I'm doing and to be doing what I'm doing in the way that I've chosen, you know, to live my life.

You know, I have to say, like, I'm glad, Gwen I'm gonna put you on the spot, but like, I can't tell you how much I really admire, you know, your political positions and your ability to, like, argue in terms of facts and position, I remember like there was one time where, you know, CIDMAA invited a South African newspaper editor, and that South African this, this supposedly anti-apartheid. A progressive anti-apartheid newspaper had accepted sponsorship, you know, from an apartheid institution, and I remember you wouldn't let go. You were at the meeting, and you wouldn't let go. And you put that guy on the spot and said, like, answer the question like you, you know, you turn the tables on this journalist and you, you said to him, answer the question by accepting this money. Like, have you or have you not been bought by the apartheid regime?

GWEN SCHULMAN

No, oh my God, I don’t remember this, hahaha

MAY CHIU

And the other thing that I really like again, this is one of my great learnings. Like, when you're really, you're sharp, insistence on an intersectional approach in understanding South Africa, African apartheid issues, because it was not only racial oppression, right? It was class, it was gender, it was over workers' rights, you know, it was over housing rights.

And I remember, you know, we used to have these discussions about, well, you know, in terms of prioritizing, you know, which struggle we needed to prioritize. And I remember there was one conversation where you said, like, very bluntly. Like, you know what? In all these liberation struggles, people always prioritize one, and they, they say, when we achieve freedom, we will deal with the rest. And it never happens. And you are so right. Like, so right. And this is something that I integrate in, you know, my continued activism as well.

GWEN SCHULMAN 43:01

Well May, you know, I just have such a record. I mean, I think where that came from is, I was studying African history, so I had learned a lot about the Algerian liberation movement and all of that. And you know, their argument that, you know, first the national liberation, then women's and you know, that was a complete collapse. Same thing happened in Mozambique, in Angola, in beginning to south so, you know, there was I, I thankfully had professors who were, you know, putting that information in our path so that we could kind of come to understand that the path to liberation was much more complicated than national liberation. So I had that benefit that I just remember.

May and I were roommates, right? We met at McGill, and we ended up being roommates for a couple of years. And I just have to say that I really smile when you say, you know, when you those early years, you were just kind of stumbling around in, you know, this fog of having made racist comments and all of this. And my recollection is that we were kind of clutching each other and stumbling through our political awakening together.

Because I really remember that we, we did go through a political awakening together, you know, and we cut our teeth on this movement for all of its flaws and contradictions and problems, it was the beginning of our awakening, and the you know, the movement served, and there were enough people in the movement, and particularly in the ANC and SWAPO and the South African labour movement that really educated us. And I feel really privileged to have been able to become politicized in that way, and going through with you like I remember us, like really learning a lot together and stumbling and making mistakes and but growing like we really grew together politically. And, you know, obviously as friends and roommates too.

But it was, it was a special time in that sense, because I think that there was kind of a veil that was lifting on a lot of things,

MAY CHIU 45:06

yeah, and, you know, something that, like, resonates with me was also, like, these great debates about violence, Oh, yeah. What is your position on violence? Like, do you condone the violence of, you know, the ongoing

GWEN SCHULMAN

Yeah, like, wow.

MAY CHIU

And that pushed us to maturity.

GWEN SCHULMAN 45:26

I remember being raging against Amnesty International for years because they did not consider Nelson Mandela a prisoner of conscience because he advocated violence. And I was shocked by that position of how Amnesty. But, you know, of course, that was their bottom line. They were, you know, they did not, that It was, yes, we really went through all of those debates too. Yes, very, very interesting.

DOUG MILLER 45:54

And of course, it hasn't. It hasn't ended with the end of apartheid, or whatever we call that formal thing, because, well, just on the level of Africa, you, you carried on with GRILA for a number of years after that as active members. And then you, you kept your activism evolving into many things, when perhaps more Africa-centric, but you and May and all sorts of issues that relate to that intersectionality that you're talking about.

GWEN SCHULMAN 46:24

Can you talk to what was your experience with sexism within the movement? Do you have any thoughts about that?

MAY CHIU 46:34

It was this very sexist movement, I you know, and I think that when you have like a – okay, so in the beginning, I was talking about like there was, like, sometimes an aura of romance around like these male leaders, charismatic and very competent. And I think it also takes, like, very true leadership not to abuse this power that leaders hold, right and but I, I've seen people like, I don't know, I don't really want to get in to a lot of it, but I've seen, it didn't happen to me, but I have seen where, you know, political leaders did try to use their privilege to impress and to –

GWEN SCHULMAN 47:28

seduce

MAY CHIU 47:30

Yeah, to yeah exactly to seduce like, like, and usually much younger female activists who were there, who were committed, who were engaged. And then sometimes when you don't have the context and the experience in the activist circles, it's hard to gauge like in what way are you turning your back on the movement if you're not welcoming like advances, right? So unfortunately, that did happen, yeah.

DOUG MILLER 48:04

Yes, yes, it certainly did. Yeah, yeah, okay, well, my goodness, what a reflection got a lot more than you thought, Eh.

GWEN SCHULMAN 48:17

Actually, May, your memory is way better than mine. Jeez, you're like, pulling out all these things. Yeah, right. So well done.

DOUG MILLER 48:25

Do you have any other? Gwen's been interviewed twice, at least on this, and I'm still hearing new things that she didn't talk about.

MAY CHIU 48:32

Well, I would know. The only thing that I'd like to say is that I'm kind of in touch with Amy Kaler, her daughter had started at Concordia this fall.

GWEN SCHULMAN 48:43

I saw that on Facebook. That's amazing. Is Amy in town ever?

MAY CHIU 48:48

I think once in a while she does like, well now like she her daughter only started in the fall, so she did come to Montreal for like, a few days to help her daughter get settled. And so, I think that from time to time, she does come to Montreal, so I think it would be good like she would be somebody that you have to interview, because she was the student leader at McGill, like during the entire highlight of the divestment campaign.

GWEN SCHULMAN 49:17

I agree you reminded us of it, and I wrote her name down. I'm in touch with her through Facebook. I completely agree, because, yes, she was that, that tiny bit of a generation before you and me and we were kind of reaping the benefits of all of her work in terms of what we then went on to do. Exactly, suggestion,

DOUG MILLER 49:35

Yeah, exactly. Well, this, this is how it works with these, these kinds of projects, the snowball thing, you know another name, and yeah, and sounds, sounds excellent. Sounds like fun.

GWEN SCHULMAN 49:45

Yeah, Doug. And I keep saying, Okay, this is going to be the last interview. And

DOUG MILLER 49:49

Then, wait a minute, we're going to get a deposit done by mid, mid year. I'm pretty sure we're up. We're up to about a dozen interviews, maybe a bit more now, and we should get closer to 20. If we carry on little one every here, now and then. But that's logistics. We'll talk about that after this interview.

MAY CHIU 50:06

So okay, so what is the format of the project like in the final product?

DOUG MILLER 50:12

Should we say goodbye to our formal interview then and do this as a chat?

GWEN SCHULMAN 50:16

Yeah, we'll do it off record, right? Yeah. So just before we close this, first of all, May. Thank you so much, so unbelievably insightful and amazing. And you know, you have put into the record, because this is we're creating a record, and you've put into the record some really, really important reflections and help to correct, you know, the perceptions of a lot of other people who have contributed the project in great ways, but there are definitely some blind spots, and you've helped to kind of lift the lid on those. And so that is just a huge contribution. Thank you so much.

DOUG MILLER 50:52

Oh yeah, your insights were amazing. And just, thank you. Thank you. It's always a pleasure me, so I hope

MAY CHIU 50:58

I haven't lost my entire memory.

GWEN SCHULMAN 51:00

Yet. No, you definitely have not. I don't know what your short-term memory is like, but your long-term memory is very good.

MAY CHIU 51:07

Don't ask how yesterday was,

DOUG MILLER 51:10

and I won't ask you where you left your keys. Okay. Thank you so much. Me too. We really do appreciate this, and we'll, we'll get back to you, keep you in touch with what's going on. So, I'm just going to turn off the recording at this point and say goodbye and thank you again. Thanks.