WENDAAJI’OWIN: A land-based approach seeking to honour that which sustains life

• Main Author: Ratte, Naomi
• Other Authors: Bailey, Shawn (Architecture), Thomas, James, Straub, Dietmar
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: St. Peters Indian Band; Landscape Architecture; Indigenous Design; Peguis First Nation; Indian; Turtle Island; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/37282

Since the arrival of settlers to turtle island, forced relocation from traditional lands has been used as a tool of colonization contributing to geographical dispossession and cultural genocide. For the St. Peter’s Indian Band (now Peguis First Nation) this tactic was used to remove the community from our original lands at the mouth of the Red River, the Netley-Libau Marsh. The site was known as the St. Peter’s Indian Settlement. Chief Peguis and his people chose to settle along the banks of the Netley Creek in the early 1700’s because of the support and bountiful harvest that the Netlety-Libau Marsh provided for his people. This was evidenced through the abundant access to waterfowl and muskrat in the marsh. In an effort to develop an approach that honours historical ties and provides an opportunity for meaningful contemporary ties to form, this work develops a set of guiding values and principles grounded in Anishinaabemowin teachings and worldviews. These teachings inform an approach that seeks to foster the restoration of the relationship with the land, both for the land itself and for the people. Through a study to unpack the arrival, occupation, and eventual removal of the people of Peguis, this work aims to provide meaningful dialogue with the land that the community was relocated from and dreams into ways that this severed connection can be restored. This work identifies an opportunity for an Indigenous processes and design that are founded in building, maintaining and fostering connections with the land. Furthermore, the practicum works to develop a design approach that is centered in an inclusive narrative that seeks to value the human, animal, plant, environmental connection. Together, these qualities converge to propose a design approach that cultivates a relationship with the place that the community of Peguis was removed from. May 2023