Three advocates — an architect, a housing provider, and an interdisciplinary design-planning scholar — discuss challenges and exchange perspectives on housing for Canada’s diverse and dispersed Indigenous population. This lecture explores the unique social, cultural, and logistical challenges associated with the design and construction of housing for Indigenous peoples, both within and beyond their traditional communities.

SPEAKERS: Jake Chakasim, David Fortin, Marc Maracle

Jake Chakasim is a Cree from the Mushkegowuk Territory in Northern Ontario. He is an Assistant Professor at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism and a doctoral candidate in UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His research focuses on resiliency, the internal migration and displacement of Indigenous communities, and formulating an etymology of Indigenous design for architecture schools in Canada. A member of the RAIC Indigenous Task Force, he has worked with firms in Ontario and British Columbia.

David Fortin is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario and a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Indigenous Task Force. He is an architect who runs a small office working primarily with Métis and First Nations communities across Canada and a professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Fortin is also part of the Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), a curatorial collective that will represent Canada at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Marc Maracle is a Mohawk from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory who has worked for 38 years on First Nations and Indigenous issues. He is currently the executive director of the Gignul Non-Profit Housing Corporation. Maracle has served as a senior policy advisor with the National Aboriginal Management Board at Human Resources Development Canada, executive director of the National Association of Friendship Centres, and co-chair of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association’s Indigenous Advisory Housing Committee.