Dr. Satwinder Kaur Bains, director of the South Asian Studies Institute (SASI) at UFV recently talked to The Cascade about her past, her desire to make change, her aspirations, and more. Dr. Bains’ journey started with contractual work and sessional teaching in 1999 with UFV’s School of Social Work; she has now been working for the university for more than two decades. Bains took over the role as the director of SASI in 2006 and eventually became an associate professor in the School of Culture, Media, and Society.
Dr. Bains has had many dreams over the course of the years, but coming to Canada surprisingly wasn’t one of them. “I never actually thought I would immigrate to Canada,” said Dr. Bains, who believes it was destiny that brought her to immigrate when she was 18. Dr. Bains believes her life’s passion is to teach, and emphasizes that she wants to “effect change” as well as to write and be published.
Her current role as the director at SASI gives her a broad horizon to follow many pursuits. Bains said, “I’m a researcher here and so that, to me, is the canvas that I play on, that I paint on, and that I write on.” Bains explained that her position “helps me fulfill my research agenda to ensure that the South Asian studies research gets done.”
Transitioning from personal experiences to professional advocacy, Dr. Bains’ drive to be an agent of change comes from personal experience. As an immigrant herself, she found it distressing to experience racism first hand. “I remember being very hurt by it,” recalled Dr. Bains, who went through multiple stages of experiencing and understanding racism to become an advocate and educator on anti-racism. Her challenges ignited her passion to fight against racial injustice and advocate for social change.
Additionally, Dr. Bains has held many significant roles in her journey that have left a mark on the community, including being the commissioner of Agricultural Land Commission, director of the Fraser Basin Council, and serving in the Law Society of BC. She is currently the director of the Abbotsford Land Commission and the chair of the Knowledge Network. Bains is grateful to be able to follow her pursuits. “I have the ability to follow my dreams and to make them come true. Not everybody has that ability, so it’s been very, very fulfilling.”
Bains has been published over 25 times, the latest being in 2020 with a paper on exploring gender and Sikh traditions. Dr. Bains highlighted that Canada does not have enough scholarly contributions in the context of South Asian Canadian studies: “There’s only, you know, five or six ethnographies in Canada that have been written by South Asian immigrants about their experiences. Only five or six. That’s a very small number.” Dr. Bains believes there is a responsibility to publish research on the South Asian experience in Canada “to make sure that the record becomes [richer], more robust, more diverse, multidisciplinary, [and] interdisciplinary.”
Following her pursuit to publish more, Bains was an editor on Social History of South Asians in British Columbia which includes contributions from different individuals on their personal stories and history in British Columbia. Bains found the project fulfilling as it collected diverse experiences from various South Asian countries, like Bangladesh and Pakistan.
“We are seen as [a] kind of homogeneous group of people, and I want to move away from that idea because all of us are individuals, and we bring very interesting experiences to the forefront.”
According to Dr. Bains, being a woman, a visible minority, a person of colour, and an academic, allows her to contribute a different, diverse perspective to the organizations she works in.
The idea of a constantly evolving society keeps Dr. Bains moving forward in her role as an advocate. She believes, through the collective response to make a better world and understanding society’s history, she can help people have a better future. “In my job as a citizen of this country, as an immigrant,” said Dr. Bains, “it’s a sense of trust, but it’s a sense of responsibility as well.”
