A Thriving Culture

Last year, the US Department of the Interior announced the results of its investigation into the history of the federal Indian boarding schools. According to the report’s findings, from 1819 to 1969 some 408 schools were constructed across the country for the purpose of assimilating Indigenous children— against their will and that of their families. Christian Hart Nakarado, an architect and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, has a direct connection to this legacy: his great-grandfather was taken to such a school. Can architecture be translated into “acts of reclamation and healing”? he wondered during his talk as part of Indigenous Architecture Days. (The event, organized by the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning & Design, was staged at Davies Toews’s studio in late October.)

For three years, Nakarado’s Slow Built Studio has been working with the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan to plan a “living memorial” on the former grounds of a boarding school. A grant from the National Parks Service funded the schematic design, which a…