Sae Hoon Chung, after receiving his award from Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada. Photo: Dahlia Katz
Acknowledged for his service to the performing arts, the Cranbrook resident has also made other significant contributions
by Karmin Snow
During the requisite pomp and formality of the awards ceremony at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall, Sae Hoon (Stan) Chung humbly offered a speech that pulled listeners back to a reality he had learned from his colleagues and friends of the Ktunaxa Nation: Achievement does not happen in a vacuum. Achievement is collective. It happens with the support of—and often at the cost of—our relationships with loved ones, ourselves and the places we call home.
In June 2026, Chung, a ʔa·kisk̓aqǂiʔit (Cranbrook) resident, was awarded the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts, one of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards. This national award recognizes outstanding voluntary service to the performing arts by an individual or group.
A still from the National Film Board of Canada documentary “Sae Hoon Chung: Worlding,” directed by Dana Claxton and produced by Niki Little. Provided by: Sae Hoon Chung
“It is a knowledge that many settlers have lost: that a rise is supposed to cost you something, and answer to someone,” he said in his speech. “Because eventually every society must answer a question much larger than achievement. What is success for? Is it for securing a place for ourselves? Or is it strengthening the relationships that make our place possible?”
The necessity of situating oneself within the context of acknowledging where personal power is drawn from is emblematic of Chung’s varied body of work. His two published books, Global Citizen: River of Love and Other Essays (2008) and I Held My Breath for a Year (2016), collect columns originally written for the Kelowna Daily Courier. These much-loved essays, stories and memoirs reflect on his experiences as a Korean-born, Canadian-raised child of Korean immigrants. In these writings, Chung brings an honest and deeply personal perspective to topics such as racism, reconciliation and economics.
Is [success] for securing a place for ourselves?
Or is it strengthening the relationships that make our place possible?
In 2014, Chung began serving as Vice President of Education and Applied Research at College of the Rockies, initiating the organization’s long-overdue commitment to building relationships with the Ktunaxa Nation, on whose homelands the institution operates. By 2015, the first dedicated Ktunaxa education and employment classroom had opened on the Cranbrook campus.
The relationships forged through this work led Chung to serve the Ktunaxa Nation in a senior advisory role, and he has since collaborated with the Nation’s leadership and community members as a consultant in governance and strategic visioning. He has also served on the boards of the Ktunaxa-owned economic development corporations ʔaq̓am Community Enterprises and Ka·kin Development Corp.
As the three-time appointed board chair of the BC Arts Council, Chung centred the importance of aligning organizational practices with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the BC government’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, while implementing sustainable equity, diversity and inclusion practices.
No matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, you can belong.
He has also served on the board of the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility Council of Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada, and has worked to bring this focus to the boards of the Cranbrook History Centre and the Royal BC Museum.
A still from the National Film Board of Canada documentary “Sae Hoon Chung: Worlding,” directed by Dana Claxton and produced by Niki Little. Provided by: Sae Hoon Chung
The Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation partnered with the National Film Board of Canada to produce short films about award recipients. “Sae Hoon Chung: Worlding,” directed by Dana Claxton and produced by Niki Little, captures ethereal underwater footage of Chung swimming laps alongside large-scale projected images of lakes and pools, layering light, motion and sound.
In the film, Chung reflects on the hungry ghosts of achievement and status that are often pursued in the effort to belong to a community. “I had to work pretty hard to strengthen myself so that I could feel an equal in a space without authority, without title, without power. And so that’s part of what I want to do. I want to show young people that you have a place at the table. No matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, you can belong.”
Throughout his varied and challenging body of work, Chung has demonstrated that our sense of place, and the relationships that sustain it, form the foundation for work that is both meaningful and creative. He continues to forge new paths while remaining attentive to important questions: How does one participate in the development of a creative community in a way that is wholehearted rather than self-aggrandizing? How do we support creative experimentation on a broad social scale without perpetuating perfunctory histories and harmful colonial practices?
He noted in his awards speech, “The older I get, the less interested I am in how high someone climbs. I am more interested in whether they remember the land beneath the climb. Who carried it. Who paid for it. Who is still carrying it now.”
