Alfred Waugh. Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Center. 2017. Vancouver. Photographer, Andrew Latreille.
While this page offers resources on Indigenous Architecture, Ricker Library has another guide that is more in-depth and includes resources related to Indigenous communities in Latin America (Abya Yala).
Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures by
Metropolitan Indigenous Cultural Centres have become a focal point for making Indigenous histories and contemporary cultures public in settler-colonial societies over the past three decades. While there are extraordinary success stories, there are equally stories that cause concern: award-winning architecturally designed Indigenous cultural centres that have been abandoned; centres that serve the interests of tourists but fail to nourish the cultural interests of Indigenous stakeholders; and places for vibrant community gathering that fail to garner the economic and politic support to remain viable. Indigenous cultural centres are rarely static. They are places of 'emergence', assembled and re-assembled along a range of vectors that usually lie beyond the gaze of architecture. How might the traditional concerns of architecture - site, space, form, function, materialities, tectonics - be reconfigured to express the complex and varied social identities of contemporary Indigenous peoples in colonised nations? This book, documents a range of Indigenous Cultural Centres across the globe and the processes that led to their development. It explores the possibilities for the social and political project of the Cultural Centre that architecture both inhibits and affords. Whose idea of architecture counts when designing Indigenous Cultural Centres? How does architectural history and contemporary practice territorialise spaces of Indigenous occupation? What is architecture for Indigenous cultures and how is it recognised? This ambitious and provocative study pursues a new architecture for colonised Indigenous cultures that takes the politics of recognition to its heart. It advocates an ethics of mutual engagement as a crucial condition for architectural projects that design across cultural difference. The book's structure, method, and arguments are dialogically assembled around narratives told by Indigenous people of their pursuit of public recognition, spatial justice, and architectural presence in settler dominated societies. Possibilities for decolonising architecture emerge through these accounts.
The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture by
​This Handbook provides the first comprehensive international overview of significant contemporary Indigenous architecture, practice, and discourse, showcasing established and emerging Indigenous authors and practitioners from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Canada, USA and other countries. It captures the breadth and depth of contemporary work in the field, establishes the historical and present context of the work, and highlights important future directions for research and practice. The topics covered include Indigenous placemaking, identity, cultural regeneration and Indigenous knowledges. The book brings together eminent and emerging scholars and practitioners to discuss and compare major projects and design approaches, to reflect on the main issues and debates, while enhancing theoretical understandings of contemporary Indigenous architecture.The book is an indispensable resource for scholars, students, policy makers, and other professionals seeking to understand the ways in which Indigenous people have a built tradition or aspire to translate their cultures into the built environment. It is also an essential reference for academics and practitioners working in the field of the built environment, who need up-to-date knowledge of current practices and discourse on Indigenous peoples and their architecture.
The Māori meeting house : introducing the whare whakairo by
Enter and explore the powerful, ancestral world of the whare whakairo, or decorated Māori meeting house, with this engaging guide. Richly illustrated with more than 100 historical and contemporary photographs and original watercolour illustrations, The Māori Meeting House celebrates every aspect of these magnificent taonga (treasures) - their history and art forms, symbolism and cultural significance. In a clear, informative and personal narrative, Damian Skinner brings together existing scholarship on whare whakairo and his own reflections as a Pākehā art historian and curator, with reference to meeting houses from all over Aotearoa New Zealand and the world. The voices of carvers, artists, architects, writers, experts and iwi are woven into the text, to give every reader new ways of seeing these taonga - whether it is your first view or your hundredth. Equal parts history, personal essay and illustrated guidebook, The Māori Meeting House is an important contribution to contemporary discussions about Māori art and art history.
New Architecture on Indigenous Lands by
Black Elk speaks of the "square boxes" his people were forced into, and Winona LaDuke of the "boxes of mints" on Native lands. As long as the government was deciding what tribal buildings should look like, Native custom and culture were bound to be boxed in--or boxed out. But in the post-1996 era of more flexible housing policies, Native peoples have assumed a key role in the design of buildings on tribal lands. The result is an architecture that finally accords with the traditions and ideas of the people who inhabit it. A virtual tour of recent Native building projects in Canada and the western and midwestern United States, New Architecture on Indigenous Lands conducts readers through cultural centers and schools, clinics and housing, and even a sugar camp, all while showing how tribal identity is manifested in various distinctive ways. Focusing on such sites as the Tribal Council Chambers of the Pojoaque Pueblo; the Zuni Eagle Sanctuary in New Mexico; the Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos, British Columbia; and the T'lisalagi'lakw Elementary School, Joy Monice Malnar and Frank Vodvarka offer wide-ranging insights into the sensory, symbolic, cultural, and environmental contexts of this new architecture. With close attention to details of design, questions of tradition, and cultural issues, and through interviews with designers and their Native clients, the authors provide an in-depth introduction to the new Native architecture in its many guises--and a rare chance to appreciate its aesthetic power.
Our Voices by
Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture is an exciting advance in the field of architecture offering multiple indigenous perspectives on architecture and design theory and practice. Indigenous authors from Aotearoa NZ, Canada, Australia, and the USA explore the making and keeping of places and spaces which are informed by indigenous values and identities. The lack of publications to date offering an indigenous lens on the field of architecture belies the rich expertise found in indigenous communities in all four countries. This expertise is made richer by the fact that this indigenous expertise combines both architecture and design professional practice, that for the most part is informed by Western thought and practice, with a frame of reference that roots this architecture in the indigenous places in which it sits.
Voices of the Land: Indigenous Design and Planning from the Prairies by
An open resource created by the Indigenous Design and Planning Students’ Association at the University of Manitoba. "This is the first publication produced by IDPSA. Voices of the Land features 16 Indigenous students, representing a range of nations across Turtle Island, and spanning all four departments (Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Design, and City Planning) from the Faculty of Architecture. In it, you will read profiles of our members, along with their artistic visions and designs. There are profiles of our esteemed faculty members and alumni. We trust that you will be inspired by the conversations we had with several leading Indigenous designers."
