Innovation September-October 2023

F E A T U R E

comes with $30,000 in annual funding for four years. CONTROLLING NATURE VS RESPECTING THE LAND In one project Caron studied, the City of Vancouver created a request for proposals where all bids on a design project dedicated to re-imagining the coastal landscape of False Creek had to include an Indigenous knowledge keeper from a local First Nation. Proponents could have responded cynically; “This could have been tokenistic, literally having someone on the proposal in name only,” said Caron. “There’s always a risk of that.” But it

Here in Canada, he said, higher education is largely based on Western notions of knowledge where “everything is premised on the idea of a superior worldview, and that permeates into industry later. As an engineer, I am trained to look at problems and to externalize other things. In other worldviews, systems are combined in a more holistic way.” For example, he said, “some worldviews extend the idea of kinship beyond family in the human sense. That’s in stark contrast to Western notions of kinship, which would be siblings, parents. It’s profound when you start to consider that rivers and other natural landscapes can also be family." In fall 2022, Caron’s postgraduate research into how engineers, architects, and developers can integrate different worldviews into their work resulted in him receiving the inaugural Indigenous and Black Engineering and Technology Momentum Fellowship from the UBC Faculty of Applied Science, which

“Totem poles, for example,” said Caron, “are not Southern Coast Salish. So, every time you see a totem pole in Vancouver, most of the time it was put there because nobody knew the difference between, say, Haida and Coast Salish art.” The knowledge keepers’ views on the natural elements of the coastline were also significant. They knew, for instance, where the salmon used to return to “before False Creek was filled in and all those creeks were covered up and put into culverts. This kind of thing is important as we redesign a city that lives with rising sea levels.” Their knowledge informed decisions about whether to build seawalls, “like we normally do,” or “surrendering land, allowing for a naturalized buffer to absorb some of the energy from waves and create space for rising seas.” It’s the difference, Caron said, between the Western idea of controlling nature, and “a worldview that has a high respect for the land.” UBC'S GATEWAY BUILDING INCORPORATES ECOLOGICAL HEALTH Decolonization also occurred in the second project Caron studied. UBC decided to move the site of its 25,000-square-metre Gateway health education building, now in progress at the main entry to its Point Grey campus, on the basis of feedback on the preliminary design solicited from x w m ə 0k w ə y ə m (Musqueam) knowledge keepers. “A fundamental challenge the designers had was that they were limited by height, because of both zoning and building construction style,” he said. So, to provide the mixture of inside spaces UBC required without going higher, the building was projected to spread right up to the sidewalks. The Musqueam knowledge keepers, however, who believe human health is linked to ecological health, “emphasized ,

did not happen in this case. Members of the kwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and s ə lilw ə ta ɬ (Tsleil

Waututh) Nations actively participated at the design tables of the two winning teams, providing “knowledge relevant to the local Indigenous context” that included giving their perspective on what is, or is not, Southern Coast Salish.

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