To Be Belligerent//To Commit To Memory//To Live Without Fear
The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU)
April 4 to June 22, 2024 / Tue–Sat (Closed on June 18)/ 12–6pm
Panel Discussion, June 6. Recent Pasts, History in the Making: VANDU’s Past Decade, 2014–2024
Delilah Gregg, Lorna Bird, and Dave Hamm in conversation with Nathan Crompton
June 6, 5–6pm at Gallery Gachet. Free. Details below exhibition text.
To Be Belligerent//To Commit To Memory//To Live Without Fear is an exhibition marking the 25th anniversary of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), featuring images and ephemera from the organization’s archive. Since its inception, VANDU has acted as one of the pillars of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) community and has fastidiously advocated for the rights and freedoms of all drug users, especially those situated in the DTES area.
In the course of VANDU’s 25-year history, the democratic collective, which comprises current and former users, has become one of the most influential voices in the DTES. The collective has contributed its resources and member-power to engaging with local and global issues pertaining to drug liberation, drug user advocacy and houselessness, best exemplified through the collective’s contributions to the battle for safe supply and safe injection sites in the DTES; its advocacy against prejudice in public policy and government neglect of the residents of the DTES; its harm reduction and community building efforts; and, its guerrilla activism and organizing against the decampment, dispossession, and dehumanization of DTES residents at the hands of the state.
This exhibition survey of VANDU's archival history addresses the arc of the organization’s successes, failings, impact and “being” within and outside the DTES. Through a range of images embodying collective action, intimacy, state violence, commemoration, and the inherent politics tied to one’s being in relation their position and orientation within this world, this exhibition proposes a dissident history of the DTES and problematizes an inflammatory understanding of its residents present in our collective, individual and institutional imagination.
The exhibition’s title, To Be Belligerent, extends from concepts and ruminations present in the canon of fugitive feminist and queer African archival studies that call for epistemic interruptions and disruptions to the oppressor’s archive and attends to Ogheneofegor Obuwoma’s inquiry of what one becomes when their city rejects them and misrepresents their likeness, impact and history. This exhibition pays homage to the DTES residents and VANDU members – both living and dead – who have resisted attempts of erasure towards the goal of securing our collective liberation.
Olumoroti George
Director/Curator
Recent Pasts, History in the Making: VANDU’s Past Decade, 2014–2024
A Panel Discussion on The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU)
Thursday, June 6th, 2024 | 5PM | Free
Gallery Gachet, 9 West Hastings St.
Gallery Gachet is pleased to announce a Public panel featuring Delilah Gregg, Lorna Bird, and Dave Hamm in conversation with Nathan Crompton. Join us as we discuss the past ten years of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), from 2014–2024.
This panel discussion is part of the ongoing show To Be Belligerent//To Commit To Memory//To Live Without Fear at Gallery Gachet until June 22, 2024. The exhibition marks the 25th anniversary of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), featuring images and ephemera from the organization's archive. Since its formation in 1997/98, VANDU has acted as one of the pillars of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) community and has fastidiously advocated for the rights and freedoms of all drug users within and beyond the DTES.
Delilah Gregg is a Carrier woman and member of the Nak'azdli First Nation. She is a mother to one son, and has been living in Vancouver for more than 50 years. Delilah is proud to sit on the executive board of VANDU (Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users) for 2023/2024,and is current president of WAHRS (Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society). She also currently organizes with Our Homes Can't Wait.
Dave Hamm is a peer organizer and activist at VANDU, and has lived experience of the VPD ticketing blitz before and during the 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics, which he prominently organized against. Recently, he was a community organizer during the 2022 Stop the Sweeps! campaign opposing the decampment of the Hastings Tent City in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Dave has served on VANDU’s Board of Directors for 15 consecutive years.
Lorna Bird is a peer worker with VANDU and a supervisor for the organization’s overdose prevention room. She has seen firsthand the impact that Canada’s drug war has had on Indigenous communities. Lorna is the current President of the VANDU Board of Directors and a member of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society.
Nathan Crompton is a writer and activist based in Vancouver. He is a staff worker at VANDU and organizes with the Our Homes Can't Wait coalition. Nathan serves as an editor at The Mainlander and has recently completed his PhD in French History at Simon Fraser University.
Ann Livingston in Conversation with Olumoroti George
May 18, 5–6pm at Gachet
Ann Livingston, a founding member of VANDU, and curator Olumoroti George will be in conversation. Topics include collections practices of the VANDU archive, oral history, as well as Livingston's current organizing focus.
The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) was formed in 1998 to bring together groups of people who use drugs. VANDU is dedicated to improving the lives of drug users, their families, and our communities. VANDU is committed to increasing the capacity of people who use illicit drugs to live healthy and productive lives. We do this by affirming and strengthening people who use illicit drugs to reduce harms both to themselves and their communities. We organize in our communities to save lives by promoting local, regional, and national harm reduction education and interventions.
The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) was formed in 1998 to bring together groups of people who use drugs. VANDU is dedicated to improving the lives of drug users, their families, and our communities. VANDU is committed to increasing the capacity of people who use illicit drugs to live healthy and productive lives. We do this by affirming and strengthening people who use illicit drugs to reduce harms both to themselves and their communities. We organize in our communities to save lives by promoting local, regional, and national harm reduction education and interventions.
▢ VANDU challenges traditional client/service provider relationships and empowers drug users to design and implement harm reduction interventions.
▢ VANDU believes in every person’s right to health and well-being. We also believe that all people are competent to protect themselves, their loved ones and their communities from drug-related harm.
▢ VANDU is committed to ensuring that drug users have a real voice in the creation of programs and policies designed to serve them.
▢ VANDU understands that drug use ranges from total abstinence to severe abuse – we recognize that some ways of using drugs are clearly safer than others.
▢ VANDU recognizes that the realities of poverty, racism, social isolation, past trauma, mental illness, and other social inequalities increase people’s vulnerabilities to addiction and reduces their capacity for effectively reducing drug-related harm.
Together with the citizens of Vancouver, VANDU works to minimize the harmful effects of illicit drug use by calling for a wide spectrum of effective, compassionate, well-researched interventions such as heroin and cocaine prescription programs, housing for users, and accessible, effective detox and addiction treatment. Illicit drug overdose deaths and illnesses are preventable. And the corruption of our law enforcement, drug-related crime, and the black market for illicit drugs are direct results of the ill-conceived and futile drug war.
Image: Pablo Pincott (June 11, 1961 - July 20, 2023), longtime member of the Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society and Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and survivor of the Winters Fire holding up a banner and middle finger during a march in the Downtown Eastside for International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, 2022. Rest in power Pablo.
