Architects Against Housing Alienation – Not for Sale!: 3. First Nations Home Building Lodges
Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) occupied the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2023 with Not for Sale!, their campaign of ten demands for decommodified housing in c\a\n\a\d\a. The following is an extended description of one of these demands and proposal made up of an activist strategy, a plan for implementation, and an architectural project.
3. First Nations Home Building Lodges
We demand First Nations home building lodges. After millennia of self-sufficiency, First Nations people’s ability to build their own housing has been unduly restricted by paternalistic government legislation over building and sourcing of raw materials. We demand First Nations Home Building Design Lodges tied to housing manufacturing facilities on reserves, to build capacity within communities by grounding the production of houses and their components, in community values, language, and education.
The housing crisis on reserves in what is now known as Canada has resulted in extreme shortages and poor living conditions for First Nations peoples. Federal funding for housing on reserves mostly produces standardized homes that ignore the diverse needs and cultural identities of these communities. The jobs in the design and construction industries that arise through this funding rarely benefit the communities directly, since the overwhelming majority of consultants come from far-off locations. This results in housing that is a colonial commodity rather than an expression of identity, an embodiment of opportunity, or a holistically healthful home. We need a different approach that cultivates and maintains housing capacity within First Nations communities. We demand federal funding to support the establishment of First Nations Home Building Lodges on reserves in collaboration with communities across the country.
Investment in Home Building Lodges will allow communities to ground the design and production of houses within their own context and stories, providing an opportunity for housing to express their unique sets of values, language, and epistemology – providing a meaningful pathway towards housing sovereignty.
To demonstrate the power and impact of our demand, we call for a pilot First Nations Home Building Lodge (name to be determined by the community) and associated manufacturing facility at Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) to be funded by the federal government and include partnerships with various educational and industry partners. The manufacturing facility that will work in tandem with the Home Building Lodge will be designed to build housing components including the innovative ‘universal utility core’ which is currently being developed by OCN Housing to assist Northern and remote First Nations to improve their housing construction programs.
The Home Building Design Lodge serves to support, guide, and enhance the new manufacturing facility, fostering community engagement and cultural preservation. It upholds traditions of making and storytelling, complementing educational infrastructure on reserves. The Lodge serves as a catalyst to disrupt current housing models and repositions housing production as a way to preserve culture. It’s adaptable and scalable, reflecting each community’s ecological, spiritual, and cultural richness. The future proliferation of Home Building Lodges across the country will offer essential support to the inspiring grassroots initiatives currently underway on many reserves that address the housing crisis through extensive community engagement. By providing communities with resources that uphold their unique visions, housing can be transformed from a mere commodity to a place that embraces the cosmology of diverse identities across Turtle Island.
First Nations Home Building Lodges Contributors:
Region: Prairies
Activist: Sylvia McAdam (Windsor University, Big River First Nation), Alex Wilson (University of Saskatchewan, Opaskwayak Cree Nation), One House Many Nations
Advocate: Lancelot Coar, Honoure Black, Naomi Ratte (Peguis First Nation), University of Manitoba
Architect: David Fortin (University of Waterloo, Métis Nation of Ontario), Matthew Baker, Celina Rios-Nadeau, David T Fortin Architect Inc.; Shawn Bailey (University of Manitoba, Métis Nation of Ontario), Laurie Aftanas, Luxmy Ragunathan, Grounded Architecture; Jason Surkan (Métis Nation of Saskatchewan), solo Architecture