Date: 2022
Roles: Facilitator, Panelist, Researcher
Collaborators: Je Suis MTL
Reclaiming Our Spaces: a discussion on territory, heritage, identity and place-keepign in Tio’tià:ke
In what ways are urban spaces complicit in the erasure of BIPOC presence? In what ways does Western architecture go counter to indigenous ways of relating to the world around us? How can place-making and place-keeping be realized and meaningful in the contemporary context for cultures diverging from the dominant one?
These were some of the themes raised in this informal public discussion held between myself and Carling Sioui as part of the Exposition : Entre le passé & le présent / Between Past & Present exhibition at WIP Gallery, organized by Je suis Montréal / I am Montreal.
Carling is currently pursuing her Master’s in Landscape Architecture and is working in collaboration with the INRS, Mikana and the municipality on a project to re-think certain public spaces from an indigenous perspective. I am and have been involved with the Chinese community here in Montreal, and more recently with anti-gentrification and community-building efforts in Chinatown, which was recently awarded partial heritage status and had its enlarged borders officially recognized, in January.
Both of us tried to express the perspectives, connection points and historical differences from our respective communities (without purporting to be 100% representative of those communities) around topics such as legacies of colonialism, and our relationship to territory, culture and land.