Unsettling Canadian Modernism: Decolonizing Narratives of Modernist Architectural History

In her 2010 publication Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada Paulette Regan defines the settler inability to comprehend Indigenous knowledge as the space of “not knowing”¹ and suggests that the settler scholar harness this as part of a decolonial stance that moves beyond mere reflexivity or passive empathy into an actively vulnerable and unsettled realm.² She outlines what she refers to as an “unsettling pedagogy” that does not simply reveal Indigenous truths and histories, but is “transformative,”³ in reference to Taiaiake Alfred’s outlining of Indigenous learning methods.⁴ This paper asks how these methodologies can be applied to revising the history of modernist architecture in Canada. Such histories are replete with narratives of non-Indigenous architects appropriating Indigenous design tenets and forms, told by architectural historians speaking from primitivizing angles that have ultimately denied Indigenous agency within the modernist discourse. The architectural history of Arthur Erickson (arguably Canada’s most celebrated modernist architect), is one such example. How can both Indigenous and settler architects work to unsettle and problematize such narratives? Drawing from the work of seminal Indigenous scholars such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Shawn Wilson, this paper reiterates that it is not enough to merely recognize the significant contributions made by Indigenous architects and artists, but to ask how this research can benefit Indigenous communities today, and not just the scholars who study them.

¹ Paulette Regan. Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010) 41.
² Ibid., 51.
³ Ibid., 52.
⁴ Ibid.