Lillian Nakamura Maguire, the public education specialist for the Yukon Human Rights Commission, has been appointed to the board of directors for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

'Ms. (Nakamura) Maguire has acquired much relevant experience in her career that will certainly be of great benefit to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation,' Liza Frulla, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, said in a statement last week.

The foundation is a Crown corporation that operates at arm's-length from the federal government. Its mission is to look at the causes of racism in Canada and to provide independent and outspoken national leadership on combating racism.

'The Canadian Race Relations Foundation aims to help bring about a more harmonious Canada that acknowledges its racist past, recognized the pervasiveness of racism today and is committed to creating a future in which all Canadians are treated equally and fairly,' states the organization's website.

The foundation's purpose is to collect research, data and information to provide a knowledge base to governments, academia, business, labour and community organizations for the development of effective race relation policies and practices.

Nakamura Maguire said in an interview last week she feels privileged to be named to the board.

'I'm really looking forward to the experience,' she said.

Nakamura Maguire has served at the human rights commission since 2002.

In the past, she has worked as an educational consultant in Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon, as well as co-founding Connecting Cultures of the Yukon and serving on the RCMP commissioner's advisory committee on visible minorities.

She was also the associate director with the Cultural Diversity Institute at the University of Calgary and the city's task force on Cultural and Racial Diversity.

Despite her vast experiences, Nakamura Maguire said she believes she will have a lot to discover from her future work with the foundation.

'I stand to learn a great deal,' she said.

She will be serving a three-year term, in the part-time, unpaid position which will involve some travelling to the foundation's Toronto office.

During her term, she hopes to be able to help in continuing to develop the direction of the foundation while also looking at actionable items for the future.

She believes the experience will provide her with an opportunity to develop ideas and programs regarding how to deal with racism and concerns of visible minorities in the Yukon.

Nakamura Maguire has dealt with racism in the past. Her parents were placed in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War.

'My parents didn't talk about it when we were children,' she said, adding they didn't begin to discuss their experiences until she was a young adult.

She said their stories have shaped the context of her life's work.

Spending time working in northern Alberta while she was young in a predominantly Metis community also gave her a 'strong lesson' in social justice and inequality.

'It was a very powerful first work experience,' she said.

There is a connection between the experience of Japanese Canadians being put into internment camps and aboriginal people being placed in residential schools, she said.

Her family's history has enabled her to understand how both have caused a loss of cultural identity, she added.

'Canadians wouldn't say they are racist, but some of our institutions and history are racist in nature,' she said.

Nakamura Maguire said she feels her joining the board of directors is coming 'full-circle.'

The foundation received a $24-million endowment fund in October 1996 as part of the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement, which was an acknowledgment of the unjust treatment of Japanese Canadians during the war.

Nakamura Maguire is not the first Yukoner to be named to the board.

Shirley Adamson, general manager of Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon, sat on the board from 2000 to 2003.