35 minute read
Naomi Ratte
NAOMI RATTE IQALUIT PARKS MASTER PLAN
Iqaluit, NU TEXT Pamela Young
Naomi Ratte, who describes herself as “a mixed-race woman of Pakistani and Anishinaabe heritage,” is interested in identity and connections between people and place. At the University of Manitoba, where she is pursuing her Master of Landscape Architecture, she co-founded the Indigenous Design and Planning Students’ Association (IDPSA) and co-edited the 2021 IDPSA publication Voices of the Land: Indigenous Design and Planning from the Prairies. In it, she and 15 other Indigenous U of M students answer the question: “Why are you studying design and how do you bring your cultural identity into your work?”
As an artist, Ratte won Canadian Heritage’s Art in the Capital Competition in 2018, transforming Ottawa’s York Steps into a salmonthemed artwork titled Jump!. At the start of the pandemic, she began learning beadwork—one of a lineage of important crafts that Indigenous people have refined with each generation. To her, one of the most inspirational aspects of beadwork is the community around it; Ratte participates in a beading circle with several other emerging Indigenous designers from Winnipeg.
Ratte’s cultural identity also comes out in her work since 2017 as a technical researcher with Ottawa-based Indigenous consultancy NVision Insight Group. Her work with NVision includes a landmark master plan for two Iqaluit parks that received Community Joint Planning and Management Committee approval last December. The Iqaluit Kuunga Nunalingnut and Qaummaarviit Inuit Nunagiqattaqsimajatuqanginni Master Plan establishes a 20-year stewardship and development framework for the Nunavut capital’s most visited park, 4,310-hectare Iqaluit Kuunga (formerly Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park) and the 15-hectare Frobisher Bay island Qaummaarviit, a sacred heritage site occupied for more than 750 years by Inuit, Thule, and Dorset cultures.
Landscape architect Chris Grosset, NVision’s senior consultant on the master plan and a former Nunavut Parks Division employee with decades of experience in the region, explains that Iqaluit Kuunga is both “a gateway park for people making their first visit to Nunavut and the backyard park where the community recreates.” Key master plan aims are to ensure that rapidly intensifying visitor day-use will not impede traditional Inuit uses of the land, such as harvesting, and to protect landscape and cultural features in intensively visited areas with boardwalks and other infrastructural interventions. The linchpin strategy is to have community members share the responsibility for setting parks-related policies with government.
Ratte participated in several capacities throughout the master plan development: she was part of fieldwork and committee meetings, and assisted in the development of site plans, renderings, mapping work, and final design document layout. Through this visual representative work, she strives to use her role and perspective to convey the connection between people and place, helping to communicate “why this place is so special.” She says that connections to land have been continually disrupted by external forces, and brings an understanding to the work that “our connection to land can be sustained, reconnected, or discovered through landscape architecture.” She adds, “for me, it is about showing how the land is a reflection of us, our heritage and our future.”
Recent fuel contamination crises at Iqaluit’s water treatment plant have underscored the importance of the master plan’s recommendations for improved access to a freshwater collection site within the park, used by many area residents. Equally significant is the park’s recent renaming. What the Government of the Northwest Territories established as Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park in 1974 (25 years before Nunavut’s creation), was named for the daughter of 19th-century U.S. explorer Charles Francis Hall’s patron—someone who never set foot in the region. The traditional Inuktitut name, meaning “place of many fishes” is now the official one. “For that name to be officially recognized by the Territory is a step in reconciliation,” says Ratte. “It creates an invitation to tell a story about the landscape, just as the name describes.”
ABOVE The fieldwork team for the Iqaluit Kuunga park and Qaummaarviit heritage site master plans included Chris Grosset (NVision), Naomi Ratte (NVision), and Chelsea Synychych (HTFC Planning + Design). OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Cultural, natural, and development zones in the park; winter view of the lookout; reconstructed Qaumaq at Qaummaarviit; visitors engaging in a traditional game; Iqaluit Kuunga (also named Sylvia Grinnell) River; Chelsea Synychych and Chris Grosset working on the inventory of park resources.
C. GROSSET/NUNAVUT PARKS AND SPECIAL PLACES
T. WOOD/NUNAVUT PARKS AND SPECIAL PLACES
C. GROSSET/NUNAVUT PARKS AND SPECIAL PLACES
CANADIAN ARCHITECT INVITES ARCHITECTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO ENTER THE 2022 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
ENTRIES OPEN AUGUST 1
Deadline: September 12th, 2022 Architecture project entry fee: $195 * Architectural photo entry fee: $75 *
Since 1967, our annual national awards program recognizes the architectural excellence of projects in the design and construction phases.
Submissions will be accepted in PDF format, up to 12 pages with dimensions no greater than 11” x 17”. Total file size is not to exceed 25MB. There is also the option to submit a video up to two minutes in length. This year, we are also presenting the fourth edition of the Canadian Architect Photo Awards of Excellence, open to professional and amateur architectural photographers.
Winners of the architectural project and architectural photo competitions will be published in a special issue of Canadian Architect in December 2022.
For more details and to submit your entry, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com/awards
DECOLONIZING THE DESIGN PROCESS WITH FIVE INDIGENOUS LAND-BASED PARADIGMS
“… a space that is somehow meaningfully organized and on the very point of speech, a kind of articulated thinking that fails to reach its ultimate translation in proposition or concepts, in messages … the various landscapes, from frozen inland wastes to the river and the coast itself, speak multiple languages … and emit a remarkable range of articulated messages.”
– Peter Kulchyski, from Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut
ABOVE Students from a design study conducted with Indigenous community partners honour the land with offerings made to the site’s animals, trees, water, and to the ancestors, in an open fire. As an initial site marker, the group builds a shelter using deadwood collected from the site.
TEXT Shawn Bailey, Honoure Black and Lancelot Coar
Over the last decade, as faculty members and instructors at the University of Manitoba, we have begun to use our classrooms and design studios to engage in partnerships with Indigenous communities. Our aim has been to develop meaningful research and studio projects to explore how the design disciplines can learn from—and contribute to the needs and ambitions of—Indigenous communities. Through this intent, the projects have aimed to position Indigenous communities as a guiding voice, opening the way for those communities to shape the goals of the studios, and ensuring that the outcomes always serve in a good way.
This work has been an opportunity for us to reconsider how contemporary architectural education can evolve past the colonial frameworks that determine much of the present discourse. We believe that these studios are a platform for exchange; a back-and-forth gathered relationship between our programs, students, instructors, and Indigenous community members. Rooted in both Indigenous and Western worldviews, these studios have challenged traditional academic models for teaching to include Indigenous ways of knowing, making, and doing, to engage with the human and more-than-human worlds.1 In doing so, we ask: how can we decolonize design practices and create a reciprocal praxis for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners, students and scholars?
To answer this question, we have begun to develop a decolonial and unsettling design framework to help guide both students and instructors to work through an Indigenous lens. This often requires one to “see with two eyes,” or learn from the strengths of both Indigenous and Western knowledge, for the benefit of all. By bundling a philosophical and dialogic collaboration with both Indigenous ways of knowing and Western schools of thought, we create a mutually beneficial and synergistic relationship as a way forward.
In the studios, students begin to understand that Canada’s settler-colonial practices have created lasting and devastating impacts on Indigenous communities, disconnecting many peoples from their roots, traditions, and ceremonies. They learn first-hand about how past and current social and political policies were designed to create the erasure of Indigenous peoples from their land, culture, and stories. We find that only once students come to understand these realities, can they begin to question how design practices can help address these systemic injustices that persist today.
Foundational to these studios is the idea that knowledge is all around us, rooted most deeply in place and the people and communities with whom we serve as designers. As such, these studios prioritize teachings offered from cultural guides, traditional languages, grassroots organizations, people with lived experiences in communities, and work on and with the land itself. This (re)framing of where knowledge comes from is the first step in decolonizing and (re)mapping2 the design practice.
The following Five Indigenous Design Paradigms have evolved from this ongoing work, as a tool to help students in this learning process. They can be used as a sequential or non-sequential praxis that augments the typical design processes. The paradigms are not meant to replace existing processes, but rather become rooted in current methods to give attention to place, intuition, listening, visions,
reciprocity, and sharing a good story. This is an iterative process: a back-and-forth, forwards and back. It can be cyclical, or in constant motion. The main purpose is to create a sense of awareness in the individual, making them available to the teachings of the land and community, to promote creativity, and to remind them to always ask, “How am I giving back?”
FIVE INDIGENOUS DESIGN PARADIGMS
Da na ka mi gad: It takes place, happens in a certain place From daN - There is a certain place; Akamig - land, ground, landscape, event; ad - it is in a state or condition.
We should ask ourselves: What is place?
Mohawk scholar Sandra Styres explains that by occupying the emptiness of space, by being present, space becomes “placeful.” Mohawk scholar Vanessa Watts notes how Indigenous societies are reliant on particular and powerful relationships to land and place. Watts observes that human thought and action are derived from a literal expression of particular places and historical events. According to Watts, the agency that place possesses for Indigenous peoples can be thought of as similar to the agency that Westerners locate in human beings. Moreover, Indigenous peoples are extensions of the very land they walk upon, and have an obligation to maintain communication with it. In Indigenous design, place should be defined by culture, spirit, people, the land, language, other beings, time, and experience. To truly understand a place, you must subject yourself to it, be immersed in it, and commit to the experience it offers.
The position in this paradigm is about relationship-building and taking time to understand. It is about acknowledging your uniqueness and where your gifts lay, and allowing a particular place to speak to your practice. Through kindness and openness, the place opens up in distinctive ways, helping to remove the perceptive barriers that separate us from the natural world, forming the foundation of our creative acts.
When we began exploring this paradigm, we engaged with our Anicinabe cultural guide Calvin Skead from Wauzhushk Onigum, located on Treaty 3 in the Lake of the Woods area. He sat with us and generously shared his understandings of gift-giving and what it means to work in a “good way.” After, to honour the land, we prepared offerings for the wolf that lives on the site, the trees, the small creek running through the property, and for our ancestors in the open fire. Our time with Calvin set the tone: it was disarming, and made us vulnerable and available to the site and the experiences we were about to encounter. He taught us to understand a place by slowing down, having patience, listening, and connecting through our experiences.
We believe an essential part of understanding a place is connecting with it, witnessing it as an animate being. As we see it, preparing and offering gifts to the land builds relationships with the natural world. It creates a sense of openness that moves us to consider, in Calvin’s words, “all our relations.” Through habits of kindness and connection, we believe that a shift in mindset has the power to build relationships with place, and to profoundly change how we exchange with the environment and understand our relationship to it through our design practices.
An do tan: Listen for it; wait to hear it.
“Land is more than the diaphanousness of inhabited memories; Land [with a capital L] is spiritual, emotional, and relational; Land is experiential, (re)membered, and storied; Land is consciousness—Land is sentient. Land refers to the ways we honor and respect her as a sentient and conscious being … a philosophical construct.” –Sandra Tyres, from “Literacies of Land, Decolonizing Narratives, Storying and Literature”
TYMON MELNYK
LAUREN BENNETT
TERESA LYONS
TOP Anicinabe guide Calvin Skead from Wauzhushk Onigum, located on Treaty 3 in the Lake of the Woods area, provides teachings to the students through song and stories. MIDDLE Lauren Bennett’s drawing explores her experience of the site. BOTTOM Teresa Lyons’ collection of images and natural objects from the site.
ABOVE Derelyne Raval’s multimedia site drawing emerges from a patient listening to the site and to its community of people and other living beings as a first declarative act.
This paradigm is about spending time on the land, connecting with the place, and being guided by your intuition. It is about working in whatever way you desire, letting your heart and impulse reveal new possibilities. Andotan promotes working to engage your inner creativity, inspiring and connecting to the process while rooting yourself mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually in place and in the land.
In one studio, we worked with a regional Indigenous community regarding the topic of food sovereignty. Students were asked to develop site plans from the stories they heard during our community visits. Sixteen students hung visions on the walls of the community centre. Instead of the typical site drawings and designs, one student had allowed the process to lead her to make a textile map and a book of illustrations, which shared her reflections on the stories she had been told by the community. You could tell she was unsure about what she had prepared, but by trusting her intuitive process, she had accomplished what she felt was right—and the community members embraced it. The openness of her work provided an opportunity for the community to dream about the project with her. The conversations that followed the presentation of her work profoundly influenced the remainder of her studio project, and provided a depth of engagement with the community that was only made possible through her unique approach to the work.
We believe that Andotan is the first declarative work, where students and practitioners reveal that they have heard something. During this process, knowing when to slow down is essential. Being patient and listening—moving at a pace slow enough so that you can receive the teachings.
Ba waa ji gan: A Dream, A Vision
I have lived here longer than where I was born I walk along its concrete trails Paths have led me through back alley dreams Still my visions take me back That place where the river blessed me I could dive down deep within that clear cold water Stretch my arms out to touch bottom … -Duncan Mercredi, from “This City”
Through listening, dreaming and following your intuition, Bawaajigan is the realization of Andotan. It suggests that by performing this intuitive and reflexive practice, a vision will appear. In design practices, intuition is often associated with a design impulse that lacks accountability to the broader complexities of a project. However, Bawaajigan suggests that as we recognize ourselves to be creative beings who sense the world in conscious and unconscious ways, design concepts or ideas will arrive: not through random association, but through an attentive awareness of the fuller realities of a project. An understanding of what matters that can
MAX SANDRED
ABOVE LEFT Tara Fuller’s site habitation collage evokes the relationships between people, plants, animals, and the built environment. ABOVE RIGHT Max Sandred’s process drawings for the Kitigay Farm project blend hand-drawn and computer-generated images.
only be achieved after one has heard the teachings from Andotan and digested what they mean to the individual. It is by approaching the process with humility and openness that the dream or vision will appear. This paradigm opens the designer to prioritize concepts that develop from one’s nature and from one’s intuitive response to a project, while avoiding the objective mode of creating in a more solution-oriented manner.
In these studio projects, one of the main challenges is to help students realize that designs can arise in many ways, and that one cannot force a design to happen. Instead, one has to be patient for the process to reveal itself. The dream or vision that Bawaajigan offers is not so much a manifestation of a design itself, but rather a set of relationships that reveal themselves in order to help guide the design direction—a way of moving forward, in a good way.
In one case, a student was struggling in how to manage and apply the numerous stories and teachings she had been exposed to in the design process. Rather than providing clarity on how to move forward in the project, these teachings revealed more complexity to the relationships of the site and dynamic conditions that the project would need to engage with, if it were to provide a meaningful gift to the community. After some conversation with members from the community, the student came to understand that her job was to not simplify the complexity or fit it into a design; instead, she needed to embrace it. She found a way of drawing the site in which the individual teachings and site conditions could be layered, becoming situated against, on top of, and within each other, revealing the nature of the landscape in which she was to work. This approach allowed her to view indeterminacy as the common ground of the site. Her design direction became a negotiation of these complexities, and the design of her project itself arose from this negotiation of site, circumstance, and balancing the layers revealed in the drawings and teachings.
Meshk wad: In Turn, in Exchange
As a process of humility, Meshkwad combines two directions. The first is to understand the gifts that we as designers can give, and the second is to understand what gifts will benefit our community partners. Sometimes, what we design can be problematic or even a burden. It is essential to turn into the work, and exchange gifts that both fit our abilities and benefit all.
As one studio progressed, a student came to ask, “How we can design with nature?” Through the work, she realized that the first step is to see nature as an animate being, participating as a partner in the process. Inspired, she rewrote a section of the National Building Code and titled it “Natural Being Flows,” translating nature’s voices into human legislation. Her text describes all beings as free and equal, and entitled to recognition, protection, and rights.
DERELYNE RAVAL
BROOKE DE ROCQUIGNY
We believe that gifts should go beyond the intention. As designers, we should ask ourselves, what are we giving back? Consider how the exchanges of dreams and visions both from our partners and from us as designers inspire, empower, connect with people and places, connect with the land, and manifest materially. Design is an action; it is a resultoriented exchange between partners. It should be cyclical: in motion and ever-changing, rather than the fixed outcome of a linear process. We should always return to the term Meshkwad. Design can be seen as a result-oriented exchange between partners, similar to the way that physical gifts are exchanges of material objects. But in many Indigenous cultures, gifting is a sharing of wealth meant to keep goods in movement between owners. The gifts of design can similarly be seen as cyclical, in motion and ever-changing. Design is most powerful as an action, rather than as the fixed, final outcome of a linear process. We should always return to the reciprocity inherent in the term Meshkwad.
Naa go toon: Make it Show, Reveal it
The success of a project should be revealed in its ability to tell a good story. Beyond its superficial value as entertainment, the powerful capacity of storytelling is the process of opening to new opportunities. In design, storytelling happens when you acknowledge the journey and bring that story through the project. Again, as a gift, you have arrived amid a historical trajectory, and together in partnership, you are offering a continuation of the narrative after your work is done.
The story becomes the materialization of the process. It is communicated through the design and presentation of the project. Storytelling is a decolonizing process, where students and designers can listen to themselves, communities, the land, and the language. What do we want together for the future, and what stories will get us there? The magic in storytelling is revisiting the stories as they become an essential part of your nature.
Storytelling ignites Indigenous land-knowledge. As scholars Jo-Ann Archibald (Q’um Q’um Xiiem), Jenny Bol Jun Lee-Morgan and Jason Santolo explain, storytelling is an act of decolonization, communicating through generations and memories in opposition to the exclusive and dominant Western “story” that has emerged from ideologies of colonialism. Under the umbrella of decolonizing research, storywork “aspires to re-cover, re-cognize, re-create, re-present, and ‘re-search-back’.”
Through stories, one can see parts of their own consciousness reflected, allowing for learning and growth. Through stories, designers can engage with the Indigenous and settler public to communicate worldviews and artistic aesthetics. These notions can lead to the decolonizing of our practice while generating new and shared knowledge.
Conclusion We are often asked: how can non-Indigenous researchers engage and take on these Indigenous design paradigms? Our answer is: if students and designers are working through a relational understanding of place while engaging respectfully with Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous peoples, we believe these paradigms can assist in reconciliatory actions.
Grounded in reciprocity, Indigenous worldviews acknowledge the land as sacred. As designers and instructors, we believe the sacredness of the land must be considered in our pedagogy. By reconsidering our approach in how we teach design and returning to land-based practices, students may come to see the land as their partner—as a teacher.
We must remember that motion backwards can be just as important as going forwards. We have encouraged our students to think while in motion, to consider Margaret Kovach’s idea of “giving back”: producing research processes that benefit the community in some way, and do not cause harm. Cree scholar Shawn Wilson reminds us that logic does not need to be linear. On the land, with the environment, with the space between people, it is always about relationships—and ultimately about telling a good story while sharing our gifts.
In our journey to define an Indigenous design praxis, we envision these emerging design paradigms as a decolonizing guide for practitioners and students alike. It is our hope that Indigenous and nonIndigenous designers, planners, interior designers, landscape architects, and architects can apply these paradigms to develop and practice working methods rooted in reciprocity, respect, and care for the land. The aim of these paradigms is to inspire designers to achieve a more profound creative process, and to work towards allyship with Indigenous peoples on the land in a good way.
OPPOSITE, TOP ROW An experiential section drawing through Derelyne Raval’s main building; Shane Patience’s design includes a garden harvest and food processing facility inside a rammed earth gathering space. SECOND ROW A variety of formal and informal teaching spaces are part of Brooke de Rocquigny’s design. THIRD ROW Mackenzie Jackson’s project envisages creating vocational training opportunities through the construction process. FOURTH ROW Michael’s Wu’s project includes a land-based teaching encampment where wild rice is harvested.
Shawn Bailey is a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario and a registered architect. Shawn is an Indigenous Scholar at the University of Manitoba in the Faculty of Architecture and the Price Faculty of Engineering. Shawn’s newly founded design firm and research studio, Grounded Architecture, is committed to community-driven projects and delivering architecture through storytelling.
Honoure Black is a White settler woman, mother, partner, instructor, and PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Architecture and the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, on Treaty One Territory. Her research and teaching are transdisciplinary, rooted in art history, Indigenous and settler studies, and environmental design. One of her interests is to work towards decolonizing research and practice within the fine art and design disciplines.
Lancelot Coar is a White settler man and father who has the privilege to live and work on Treaty One Territory. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Manitoba, and a PhD candidate at Vrije University, Brussels. Lancelot’s research in this area focuses on exploring how to promote design sovereignty with First Nations communities by building relationships through collaborative design studios and land-based research initiatives.
The authors would like to thank: Calvin Skead, The Community of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, Prof. Shirley Thompson and members of the Mino Bimaadiziwin Partnership, Prof. Alex Wilson and members from the One House Many Nations project, Making the Shift Grant, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Reanna Merasty, Danielle Desjarlais, Jason Surkan, Aliyah Baerg, Tara Fuller, Kitty Hong, Jelene Pugoy, Nicholas Lupky, Shane Patience, Ariana Streu, Michael Wu, Sabba Rezai, Tymon Melnyk, Brooke de Rocquigny, Derelyne Raval, Rebekah Enns, Lauren Bennett, Max Sandred, Mackenzie Jackson, Teresa Lyons, Hannah Thiessen, Kirsten Wallin, Stacey Berrington, Micaela Stokes, Kate Sherrin, Chelsea Colburn, Rhys Wiebe, Nicholas Basford, Ali Impey, and Natalie Pambrun.
1 Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweet Grass. (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions), 2013.
2 The term (re)mapping is inspired by the Native feminist notion of (re)mapping spaces on the land. The concept of (re)mapping unsettles and reorganizes bodies, and both the social and political landscapes. Mishauna Goeman explains: “(re)mapping is not just about regaining that which was lost and returning to an original and pure point in history, but instead understanding the processes that have defined our current spatialities in order to sustain vibrant Native futures.” See Mishauna Goeman, Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
SELECTION PROCESS
OCCUPANCY
CONSTRUCTION
PRE-DESIGN + PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT
PROFESSIONAL + COMMUNITY COLLECTIVE LIFT
COMMUNICATION & TRANSPARENCY
LOCAL EQUITY
TENDER SCHEMATIC DESIGN
DETAILED DESIGN
CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTS
WORKING WITH INDIGENOUS ARCHITECTS AND INDIGENOUS PROCUREMENT REQUIREMENTS
ABOVE Developing professional responsibility and awareness when working with Indigenous communities requires intent as well as follow-through. Providing a high level of service means understanding how to meaningfully build a project with an Indigenous community, not for them.
TEXT Elsa Lam with Kelly Edzerza-Bapty, Dr. David Fortin, Tiffany Shaw, Dr. Patrick Stewart, and Alfred Waugh
In the past few years, there has been an increasing awareness of the imperative for Indigenous involvement on major public architecture projects, whether their program directly serves Indigenous Peoples or not. This reflects the concept that Indigenous architects and designers—as well as the Indigenous Peoples that live both on reserves as well as throughout other urban, rural, and northern regions in Canada—are equity-deserving as a community that has experienced barriers to equal access, opportunities, and resources due to disadvantage, discrimination, and racism. Most commonly, this takes the form of a requirement on calls for proposals for an Indigenous consultant to be part of design teams. But as any firm who has responded to such RFPs knows, there are few Indigenous architects in Canada, and involving Indigenous community members directly requires thoughtful strategies.
What are some guiding principles to approaching an Indigenous architect, Elder, Knowledge Keeper or community member to be part of a team? What do non-Indigenous architects and consultant teams need to know about designing and/or building with Indigenous architects and communities? We asked five of Canada’s licensed Indigenous architects—Kelly Edzerza-Bapty, Dr. David Fortin, Tiffany Shaw, Dr. Patrick Stewart, and Alfred Waugh—for their advice. Here’s what they shared with us.
Intent and Awareness In choosing to bid on a project that serves First Nations, Métis and/or Inuit communities, the intentions of the non-Indigenous architects carry increased importance. Why are you interested in doing this project? Why are you interested in working with an Indigenous architect? To what extent is this interest oriented towards building up your firm and your portfolio, versus towards increasing the capacity or prospects for the community?
When working with an Indigenous community—or, indeed, any equity-deserving group—it is important for individual non-Indigenous architects and teams to reflect on their self-interest, as well as on their current and future place within a larger community of practice. Having a non-Indigenous architect leading a project may be perceived by an Indigenous community as a limitation to see themselves reflected on the design team and in the built project. How can a design team acknowledge this difficulty, as well as their own biases? What do they bring to the project that can add to the empowerment and agency of Indigenous architects and community?
Self-awareness is important when seeking Indigenous knowledge. Tiffany Shaw recalls attending the RAIC’s first International Indigenous Design Symposium in 2017 and looking forward to learning and sharing knowledge with other Indigenous practitioners: but then feeling overwhelmed by the number of non-Indigenous attendees. “You could sense the hunger for Indigenous knowledge,” she recalls. While some of this interest seemed to come from a genuine desire to learn and understand, she felt an undercurrent of others interested in extracting Indigenous knowledge for their own use, while leaving the Indigenous designers and community members behind.
“Considering your intentions in the first place should be part of any project,” says Shaw. But, she notes, it’s especially important when designing for an Indigenous community or other equity-deserving group.
Transparency and Sharing When partnering with an Indigenous architect, says Dr. David Fortin, “there needs to be a clarity about roles and associated fees.” He adds, “these need to be transparently talked about.” Often, involving an Indigenous architect is seen as ticking a box, rather than bringing them fully into the design process. This is where equity must exist to understand what an Indigenous partner can deliver, without sidelining them to a marginal position.
While much depends on the project and on the individual, it is important to consider roles. For instance, an Indigenous architect may be glad to be involved in community engagement, and may even specialize in this front-end part of the work. On the other hand, Fortin says, “Indigenous architects aren’t necessarily interested in always being the community engagement sub-consultant—they’re architects, and they want to be designing buildings as they are trained to do.”
Some larger non-Indigenous-owned and -operated architectural firms are beginning to build their own internal Indigenous design studios, through partnerships with universities and mentorship programs that pull Indigenous students into their firms. “It can provide an invaluable learning experience for young interns,” says Fortin, “but it’s complex.”
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There’s an added need for firms pursuing such a path to be transparent with their recruits about the risks, rewards, expectations, and opportunities that come from such offers. In any firm, Indigenous architects, designers, and interns must be provided with opportunities and equity in accordance with the additional knowledge that they bring into their project work. “Indigenous graduates and interns are hired for their knowledge of the Indigenous world as well as for their architectural skills for which they have been trained,” says Stewart. “It’s an added plus for the firm to benefit from the intern’s Indigenous knowledge, and they must fairly compensate for this cultural knowledge.”
Indigenous students can often face unseen barriers or lack resources compared to their non-Indigenous colleagues, requiring more supports. When employing Indigenous design students, how might a firm invest in that student’s future, both during and after their employment? Does that firm have a policy on equity? There is much to be done, and the RAIC’s Indigenous Task Force has been working to support its Indigenous members in these areas.
Engagement Community engagement should also be seen through an equity lens. Authentic engagement can be empowering to Indigenous communities and other equity-deserving groups. This kind of engagement can result not only in projects that are well-fitted to community needs, but that benefit from a deeply rooted sense of ownership for the community.
Engagement needs to follow the community’s lead in terms of participation, time and expectations, and any relevant cultural protocols. The designers need to consider with whom they are engaging, why they are doing it, what they are asking, and how they will work with the knowledge gained. Sensitivity and consideration are required at all stages of this process. Is your engagement approach accessible to those you are inviting to come? Logistics such as transportation or childcare access may be barriers for those who want to participate in the design process.
Engagement may involve the sharing of stories that are entrusted to the designers. Offering equitable honorariums to those involved in the engagement process is one way to acknowledge the value of such sharing, as well as one of many ways to create equity for community members. Most importantly, says Kelly Edzerza-Bapty, “knowledge shared and gained in the engagement process needs to be translated into the design work for it to be meaningful.”
Engagement processes are often seen as restricted to the beginning stages of a project, but architecture is a complex endeavour and community guidance may be helpful at multiple stages of a project. How can engagement processes continue through to the end of a project, or even beyond? Does the architectural firm hire a local Indigenous community member to be part of the design team?
Professional Responsibility Designs for buildings on reserves were once reviewed by the federal government, but that process has since been removed. Many Nations do not have the infrastructure for an Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ), which limits their capacity for internal oversight. The puts an added onus on architects, says Alfred Waugh, “to be responsible to your profession, have the respect that some of these Nations don’t have that infrastructure in place, protect the public good, and make sure your sub-consultants do the same.”
When designing for Indigenous communities on remote sites, architects have an added responsibility to ensure that their design is informed by an understanding of access, local climate, operations, and maintenance requirements. For example, specifying a mechanical system for a remote community that will require maintenance personnel to fly-in to the community is probably not the most costeffective solution. One strategy, says Edzerza-Bapty, is “creating passive rather than active systems,” and “leaning into operational and maintenance strategies and processes that can help ensure the longterm success of the building.”
Patrick Stewart says that he often recommends that communities hire a third-party to review his work, such as a Certified Professional Code Consultant or building inspector. To create further oversight, he’s helped clients put out a call for proposals, so that the third-party is chosen in way that is free from the designer’s biases. “It gives me some satisfaction that I’m looking after my client,” he says. “I feel much more confident with that kind of arrangement.” This approach also ensures that the selected third-party has appropriate qualifications and experience.
Equity and the Collective Lift David Fortin notes that in building projects, “what you are doing to benefit the community in the long-term goes beyond including an Indigenous designer.” Recent federal procurement guidelines for large projects are encouraging firms and contractors to expand their Indigenous benefits plans. This is leading to considerations about how project costs can benefit Indigenous communities more broadly, with contracts going to Indigenous-owned companies from pre-design right through to warranty. As examples, Fortin cites working on a recent project proposal with a team that prioritized setting up a youth mentorship program and Indigenous hiring strategies for sub-trades.
“How can Indigenous involvement go beyond tokenism?” asks Shaw. For her, taking an equity lens means looking at how design can facilitate a “collective lift” for communities. How can a project—small or large—allow communities to build capacity, increase their economic prosperity, and achieve long-term goals such as strengthening cultural and environmental resiliency? Indigenous involvement can help result in projects that better meet these community needs.
One Generation to the Next This equity lens also extends beyond our own profession and the borders of our own country. How can non-Indigenous architects ally themselves with Indigenous architects in Canada in working to make the AED world a more supportive place for Indigenous and other BIPOC architects to grow their capabilities and careers? If a stronger, more inclusive profession includes a greater number of Indigenous and BIPOC architects, how can they be provided with resources to learn how to protect their own interests, know their capabilities, and find opportunities to build their portfolios? How can we all improve upon the consulting partnership process, so as to respect each other’s knowledge and growth?
The present generation of established architects stands to improve the profession in ways that benefit the next generation. Self-aware, well-intentioned architects—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous— have the capacity to impact relationships that uplift those that work in architecture and design, along with their families and communities—as well as those who architecture serves from one generation to the next.
BROOK MCILROY
RAINBOW BUTTERFLY
TEXT Elsa Lam
A PAVILION IN WINNIPEG IS A PLACE OF COMMEMORATION—BUT ALSO A WELCOMING SPACE FOR GENTLE RECONCILIATION.
Last year, Winnipeg’s Nestaweya River Trail included a striking ruby-red shelter. Its swooping form was inspired by the red jingle dresses that have become a symbol of commemoration for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ people. Inside, a circle surrounded by iridescent panels opens up to the sky, creating a space of light and hope.
The project’s design was led by Indigenous architect Rachelle Lemieux (also featured on page 44), working with two other Indigenous women designers, Reanna Merasty (Ininew) and Danielle Desjarlais (Cree), and supported by Indigenous architect Ryan Gorrie (Anishinaabek), principal at Brook McIlroy, where all of the designers were working at the time.
“I’d always wanted to do a project like this,” says Lemieux, who remembers a call on Facebook seeking an Indigenous woman architect to take on the design. The initiative was spearheaded by Collective of Voices, a group of University of Winnipeg students who met in a course on non-violent social change. The students, including Angela Lavallee and Sanjam Panag, decided to take their coursework into the real world, creating a place that would both commemorate Indigenous victims of gender-based violence and highlight the issue in a positive way.
As the project started, the design and client team met for a sweat-lodge ceremony, led by Indigenous elder Grandmother Candi-Ann Smith, where attendees shared stories of their loved ones who had been victims and impacted survivors of violence. “It was quite a different community stakeholder user group than I’d ever experienced, but it felt like the right way to begin the project,” recalls Lemieux. In the ceremony, they were gifted the pavilion’s name, “Rainbow Butterfly.” Back at the office, the designers started unpacking the name’s rich metaphors: “the butterfly is about metamorphosis and change; the rainbow that appears after a storm is about a positive outlook after something bad has happened,” says Lemieux.
The pavilion took shape as three interconnected pieces—representing a mother, daughter and grandmother—clad with small shingles that mimic the microscopic water-shedding scales on a butterfly’s wings. The three pieces each contain a differently sized doorway, reflecting the three generations, and together shelter the central circle.
The inner space is intended as a place of reflection and education: it is surrounded by panels inscribed with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 231 calls to justice, and family members are invited to write the names of victims on pieces of cloth to tie to the rod structure. But it’s also a welcoming space for gentle reconciliation. “Seeing so many kids playing in it really warmed my heart,” says Lemieux. “It’s an activism and education piece for the people of Winnipeg,” adds Merasty, who values “having all those children and people passing through this, and being able to impact them.”
For Merasty, the piece has special significance as her first built work after completing her architecture degree. “It has levels of meaning for me, as an Indigenous woman,” she says. “Everyone involved felt its importance, which ended up creating something very significant.”
LEFT In the centre of the pavilion, visitors look towards the sky, surrounded by iridescent panels inscribed with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 231 calls to justice.
This building façade features Dekton® Halo in our 12mm thickness large format, used for ventilated façade applications
8X On The Park 1111 Richards St, Vancouver,BC Architect: GBL Architects Inc Fabricator/ Installer: Keith Panel Systems
