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Indigenous landscape architecture firm SpruceLab incorporates Indigenous placemaking in its design plans, as was the case at Rotary Frenchman’s Bay West Park and Beachfront Park in Pickering, Ont.Supplied
While consulting on the Kitchener Indoor Recreational Complex, the team at landscape architecture firm SpruceLab, recommended planting a white oak tree between the indoor pool and an underground cistern for storm water.
It wasn’t just an aesthetic choice; the team was thinking about water, and water’s stories.
Historically, First Nations of the Great Lakes planted these trees in great swaths as both food forests and to guide people from the lake up to northern bodies of water. Although a pool is no lake, the white oak would benefit from the cistern and serve as a symbol of traditional Indigenous place keeping.
Kerri-Lynne Garlinski, a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and landscape designer at SpruceLab, says this approach is part of what makes the company unique.
“I really appreciate how much we strive to make sure that we’ve got trees on site that are going to be cared for and are going to be maintained into the future,” she says.
SpruceLab is an Indigenous and women-owned planning and landscape architecture consultancy that has offices in Toronto, Hamilton, Edmonton and Vancouver. It operates as a social enterprise focused on economic reconciliation. Sheila Boudreau, its founder and principal landscape architect and planner, started the company five years ago. Boudreau, who has mixed ancestry–Acadian from her father (with Mi’kmaq ancestors through both sets of grandparents) and Celtic from her mother (British, immigrated from Wales and Ireland) – realized there weren’t many Indigenous people designing public realms, and that missing perspective was noticeable.
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SpruceLab founder and principal Sheila Boudreau.Supplied
The field needed more of a focus on working “in a good way with Mother Earth and not causing the damage that is typically done when we take a green field and pave it all to put new developments,” she says. “That way of work is very damaging. I’ve been trying my whole career to not do that.”
This approach is an example of an emerging academic theory called ‘critical relationalism,’ which sees design as a process of relationship building for humans-to-humans as well as between humans and the rest of the living world.
“There is an emphasis for many designers on the idea of human-centric design, but I have to critique that in a sense,” says David Fortin, a Métis architect, professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture and Canada Research Chair on the subject. “I think we’ve been really good at human-centred design to the point that we’ve forgotten about the living world outside of us, and that we’re damaging it,” he says.
But Boudreau’s inspiration was more than environmental; she also wanted to provide training opportunities in the field for Indigenous people. One of SpruceLab’s primary goals is to create jobs for Indigenous women through the work of planning and landscape architecture. Although these industries are colonial practices, meaningful engagement allows for Indigenous voices to be involved in design in direct ways, she explains.
Programs like Dbaajmowin (narrative or storytelling in Anishinaabemowin), an Indigenous-led artist collective that SpruceLab supports, and SpruceLab’s Earth Tending, a green-infrastructure training program for Indigenous people that are under-employed and unemployed, create a positive domino effect amongst communities.
For example, when SpruceLab needs furnishings for a project, they work with First Nations artists who can transfer traditional knowledge through their pieces. Additionally, some Earth Tending graduates take on landscape jobs and bring the teachings with them.
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SpruceLab makes sustainability a core part of its approach, as seen in its plan for the Indigenous Student Services Garden at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Brantford campus.Supplied
“When you connect with nature, you’re going back to your heart and to your soul. And there’s a spark. [Participants] want to learn more. And when you want to learn more, you pass that information along to your children, your friends,” says Gwen Lane, the Earth Tending program coordinator for SpruceLab, member of the Sagkeeng First Nation and a Sixties Scoop survivor.
As climate change effects worsen, it is especially critical for communities to invest in climate resiliency and understanding how respecting the earth makes a difference. We need trees that can thrive through increased stormwater and plants that can survive drought, and we need people who have the knowledge to care for them.
“Some of this work might not sound radical in a sense, but it is emblematic or representative of a shift in design thinking that I think is really rooted in Indigenous teaching and value systems,” says Fortin.
One in a regular series of stories. To read more, visit our Indigenous Enterprises section. If you have suggestions for future stories, reach out to IE@globeandmail.com.