RECOMBINANT NARRATIVES IN IMAGES || TERRITORY

AFTER RELOCATION || ATTAWAPISKAT, ONTARIO

OPEN PIT DIAMOND MINING || ATTAWAPISKAT, ONTARIO

TERRITORY TAKEN

The Attawapiskat housing and community crisis that erupted in late 2011 brought light to the plight facing many northern Aboriginal communities; the use and abuse of eminent domain. The responsibility of Canada’s federal government towards it’s First Nations People is primary one of stewardship where it should protect their rights, culture and territory over the land. Through this relationship the Crown (Canadian Government) has the ability to reclaim and sell off land irrespective of Aboriginal land claims to specific sites. With a economy based predominantly or resources extract and export the Federal Government of Canada has taken to using eminent domain to claim and relocate First Nations land and populations. In many cases this land is then sold to private industry for resource extraction, as the case in Attawapiskat, where land was claimed and sold to de Beers for the creation of an open-top diamond mine. The mine site shown displaced the existing community of Attawapiskat leaving a new community haphazardly arranged and in a state of near-ruin.

The questions that are most prevalent are ones of land ownership and how can governmental policy  be altered to allow for Aboriginal communities to establish some  form of permanence without constant upheaval and relocation? In such cases where relocation needs to occur, how can architecture, planning and design be used to lessen the impacts of such transitions? Without a shift in policy, is there a new nomadic architecture that could thrive within Aboriginal culture whilst allowing for the constant uncertainty of land ownership?

RECOMBINANT NARRATIVES IN IMAGES || ENVIRONMENT

ATHABASCA OILSANDS, ALBERTA [BOUNDARY]

ATHABASCA OILSANDS, ALBERTA [BEFORE AND AFTER]

ENVIRONMENT AS SITE OF RESOURCE

The Athabasca region of northern Alberta illustrates the environmental site implications of large industry. The scale at which site is affected is massive. Resource extraction is prevalent in the remote northern regions of Canada, as is the case with Athabasca’sOilsands. Site is seen simply for it’s richness in extractable resources and the sensitive environments, including boreal forests, rivers and tributaries, habitats, and underground water supplies, are often sacrificed.

The devastating affects of such forms of industry begin to raise serious questions of how the virgin lands of Canada’s north are approached. Can we continue to approach site through the singular lens of extractable commodities, such as oil? How far do such the impacts reach? What are the opportunities following resource extraction; can these sites be reclaimed, re-purposed, or populated? Can extraction occur whilst allowing for other forms of site occupation and purpose and does design play  a role in mitigating these two separate functions?

READING RESPONSE

MANUEL DE LANDA || UNIFORMITY AND VARIABILITY

Manuel de Landa’s essay on the philosophy of materials raises issues of our material understanding, both in a present and historic context. Material understanding and knowledge are seen as two extremes. The first seeks to embrace the homogeneous, uniform, application of materials –materials whose properties are not wholly understood but applied for their perceived superiority. The second embraces heterogeneity and variability of systemic material use. This, in de Landa’s philosophical view, is the understanding of materials that is needed once again, the understanding of the craftsman.

The potentialities of de Landa’s material philosophy can be expounded upon to reference both the cultural and site specific understandings of material complexity. With regard to the Aboriginal people’s of Canada’s North material holds a cultural significance. With reference to de Landa’s philosophy of the the craftsman connection to the inherent properties of material, the Aboriginal peoples have traditionally chose and maximized the potentials of materials, due to scarcity and need. With the pressures facing Aboriginal peoples, similar to those that have diluted the skills of the craftsman, these traditional ties to materials have been all but lost. The prescribed materials seen in many of Canada’s northern Aboriginal communities are representative of the material disconnect. Communities are built from materials that have been prescribed and are ill-suited to both site and climate. de Landa states that:

.. ‘we may need to nurture again our ability to deal with variation as a creative force, and to think of structures that incorporate heterogenous elements as a challenge to be met by innovative design.’

For both design and implementation, this innovative design must not solely be predicated on heterogeneity, but must also be innovative in away that both site specificity and the endemic material knowledge of traditional means of making and material sensitivity be wholly embraced.

RECOMBINANT NARRATIVES IN IMAGES || FABRIC

LEVITTOWN, NY

ATTAWAPISKAT, ONTARIO

FABRIC PRESCRIBED

To understand the problems plaguing many northern Native Canadian communities we can first look at how these communities are planned. The imposition of a sedentary mode of living, through governmental policy, has fragmented the traditional Native attitudes towards site. In the example of Attawapiskat, the order and zoning of the traditional North American suburb is imposed onto the landscape and responsive to no present site conditions. The physical composition is striking similar to that of Levittown, the preeminent Post-War suburb in New York.

How can Native culture and community thrive within a model designed to house the suburban dweller, especially with no urban connections? How can community planning and development begin to depart from prescribed models and move towards a cooperative understanding of culture and site?

THESIS PROPOSAL

EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS || THE EIGHTH FIRE

The Eighth Fire, a contemporary supplement to the Seven Fires prophecies, speaks of a coming rebirth and collective rebuilding of the Earth. It is said that only through a cooperative collective of nations and races can the Earth be preserved. Originating among the Algonquin First Nations people, collectively known as the Anishinabe, the prophecies have been disseminated through the Native peoples of Canada’s north through oral tradition that predate the arrival of the settler. The following thesis proposals all seek to function within the cooperative framework, prophesized by the Anishinabe people, to address the growing issues facing northern Canadian Native communities.

The landscape of Canada’s north is one of many extremes. The overt properties are environmental and geographic. Located far beyond the remote, the landscape is one that is permanently frozen, where temperatures plummet below the tolerable human extremes. The interest of this thesis lies in the First Nations communities inhabiting this landscape. The survival of community is threatened, not by forces of environment but through new extremes of policy, industry, and attitude. In December of 2011, the First Nation of Attawapiskat became a signifier of the current condition prevalent in northern native communities. The discovery of trailers with ninety residents, without running water or adequate heating, huddled within brought to the fore a housing crisis facing many like communities. At fault, the use of eminent domain on Attawapiskat territorial land for the purpose of diamond extraction and a government misappropriating funds designated for the building and maintenance of homes. The extreme environment of the north is exacerbated by an extreme attitude; the attitude of the settler. Building, maintenance, and fuel have costs that far exceed the limits of affordability. This a way of living, enforced on a people by a government charged with their stewardship.

The northern First Nations people have inhabited this environment for millennia. Now they are threatened by extreme forces of modernization and progress. The settler approach has proven inadequate, the prescribed communities require resources that must be brought from a far. The native means of living, making and community are disregarded and substituted with modern amenities and comforts. The result is unsustainable. It is a community that is ever more reliant on that which is without and extremes are generated through shortages in supply. The act of community planning is enacted top-down, prescribed and designed through government agencies. Issues of material, building and planning are resolved elsewhere and imposed to meet the presumed needs. This thesis calls for a new extreme, one that questions the mechanisms of building, design, and planning in the northern environment. The approach must be one that embraces the Eighth Fire, where neither government or community control the output, but a collective approach to community is embraced.