INCLUSION BY REBECCA MELNYK
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Among the estimated 634 First Nation communities across Canada, many continue to be sidelined or completely excluded from initial planning phases of new developments and renovation projects. Other instances of community engagement can be far from authentic, where Indigenous Peoples are often approached with a blanket notion of public consultation.
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s every community has their own story to tell and knowledge to share, a one-sizefits-all view can have negative impacts. A group of experts on the topic gathered recently to talk about the future of engagement and creating inclusive spaces. In May, a virtual session at the Interior Design Show’s Spring Conference brought together Indigenous advisors and designers who discussed how to meaningfully include Indigenous voices in the built environment. “One of the biggest protocol violations is to come to a place that isn’t yours and assume that it is,” says Guy Freedman, president of First People’s Group, adding, “whether you’re Indigenous or not, we still have a duty to consult respectfully with the people whose land we’re going to build on.”
“The last 200 years, as Indigenous communities, we’ve had little say in what our institutions have looked like.” Brian Porter, principal of Two Row Architect, a firm headquartered on Six Nations of the Grand River, south of Hamilton, spoke about oral traditions. “Storytelling is a huge part of what defines our cultures,” he says. His advice for consultants? “If you don’t take the time to listen to the stories, you’re really short-changing yourselves; you’re really denying yourself the opportunity to understand the culture— to hear the way it was intended to be passed down, which is orally,” he says. “You’re denying yourself the richness and diversity and potential that is there with each project.” As a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Indigenous Task Force, formed in
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2016, Porter has been working to promote the idea, “nothing about us without us,” as a way of advancing with capital projects. “The last 200 years, as Indigenous com mun it ies, we’ve had l ittle say in what our institutions have looked like,” he says. “It’s very, very rare for a school to get built so it’s important to engage the community because, oftentimes, they have aspirations for that structure that might not be apparent to someone who is coming from somewhere else.” In remote Indigenous communities, he sees schools as community centres— the funeral home, assembly hall and banquet hall.
