Reconciling Our Built Heritage

Check out this video to watch the Reconciling Our Built Heritage.

2024 Speaker Series: Populations Rendered ‘Surplus’ in Canada

This case study tackles the controversial “gifting” of the former United States Embassy (Ottawa, Canada) to the National Indigenous Organizations. The main issue with this “gift” is that within the current settler-colonial heritage and conservation regulations, it has strict limitations on interventions that would decolonize this building, making it the new Indigenous Peoples’ Space. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Call to Action 79 addresses that issue, in theory. However, despite an outcry by local Anishinaabeg and Indigenous activists stating that another site would be ideal, Asinabka/Akikodjiwan (Victoria Island), they must settle with this site for now.

The research is based on critical discourse analysis of government websites, reports, speeches, commissions, newspaper articles, academic articles and an emphasis on Indigenous literature. Indigenous research methods, such as storytelling, visiting and self-reflexivity, are a means to ground this research from a decolonizing framework. This research captures the reality of Indigenous hurdles at 100 Wellington and Asinabka/Akikodjiwan and shortfalls by the TRC.

_{Header image by Jean Gagnon on Wikipedia Commons, Creative Commons license.}