Fluid Reciprocity
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As part of her work in the Masters of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Toronto, Emma Mendel met with the University of Toronto’s First Nations House and the Centre for Indigenous Studies in an effort to understand how traditional knowledge might inform infrastructure design related to water.
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SITE 1 Healing | Water Treatment Plant
Text and images by Emma Mendel
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Ideas for the water treatment plant
In traditional knowledge, water symbolizes the element from which all else comes. It is a living force and the centre of life rather than simply a component of it: life, land, and water are inseparable. This relationship with water is shared by all those on earth: our ancestors, the fish, grass, and rocks. It is characterized by a spirituality and sacredness, as well as an intimate knowledge and reciprocal respect and reverence for each body’s rights and responsibilities.
Emma Mendel
In a political environment of reconciliation between First Nations and Canada, it is timely to question the continued deployment of universal infrastructure solutions that have shaped Canada’s landscapes. What are the possibilities of pairing infrastructure standards with traditional knowledge?
Canada has the second largest global supply of fresh water, yet for First Nations communities, limited or no access to safe drinking water is a persistent reality of daily life. Nearly half of the 133 First Nations communities in Ontario have not had access to clean drinking water for more than ten years, according to a CBC news report, and an astounding 20 percent of First Nations communities are currently under drinking water advisories. Shoal Lake 40 First Nation is one community that has been under boil water advisories for more than ten years. The community, which straddles the Manitoba-Ontario border, has existed on an artificial island for one hundred years. In 1919, Winnipeg built a passive aqueduct to transport clean water from the community’s lake, Falcon Lake, to the provincial capital, an ambitious feat of engineering that still sustains the Greater Winnipeg Water
