Treaty Lands, Global Stories: Designing an Inclusive Curriculum

To change the way we build, we must first change the way we learn to build. Historically, architecture has played a significant role in asserting settler colonial power over Indigenous peoples. These entrenched colonial structures persist, now affecting not only Indigenous peoples, but also new immigrants and the perspectives they carry. At the University of Waterloo School of Architecture (UWSA) our education is built on a foundation of cultural history. However, amid a culturally diverse student body and with traditional Indigenous territory underfoot, Eurocentric precedents, practices, and world-views remain dominant. It is evident that other design schools face similar challenges.
Looking beyond diversifying only the content we study and shifting away from Eurocentric perspectives, ‘Treaty Lands, Global Stories’ is a student-led initiative formed at UWSA. Our research aims to address how to design a more inclusive architectural curriculum, avoiding tokenism and appropriation, with an awareness that it is not possible to cover all cultures and histories. This paper proposes potential methodologies for designing a curriculum through case studies of current approaches within educational institutions. Initial research suggests that changes must be implemented incrementally through both short and long-term strategies. These strategies must be established through collaborative input from both students and faculty members. Efforts can be strengthened by interdisciplinary collaboration within universities as well as by sharing of resources and expertise between different schools of architecture.
Architecture schools in Canada must begin to dismantle the colonial structures that bind us. Only then can we redefine the future of architectural practice.