DOUGLAS J. CARDINAL
As an architect, I would like to see our communities, our urban centres and our cities become beautiful organic forms that wrap around people in a good way and serve families. There is a total connection between organic architecture and the natural environment around it. Forms and life become so intertwined that the boundaries between nature and the city cannot really be defined. They become spiritually at one with nature.
Not only do I want to see cities connected with nature, I want to see the return of the concept that architecture and planning is the mother of the arts. It combines painting, sculpture and space as a powerful art form that expresses the best of who we are. And if it is done with beauty and harmony, it aspires to be frozen music.
For my Anishinaabe community, I would like to see our people treated and respected as nations. We have been on this land and lived in harmony with each other, and with nature, for thousands of years. We have learned a great deal from following natural law, which is the true basis of science.
We were a matrilineal culture, and it was our clan mothers who guided us in a way where every man, woman and child were honoured with absolute respect for each marvellous individual. Each individual was sovereign over themselves and respected as an equal. We governed ourselves in a circle and made our decisions by total consensus. Our governance was a true democracy based on respect, not on power, domination and adversity. In our culture, women were honoured because they gave of themselves to bring forth the next generation and nurture them with loving and caring. It is these values that permeate our culture.
I look to the future where we decolonize ourselves, embrace our traditional government source, and restore our nations. We can make a tremendous contribution with the knowledge we have of living in peace and harmony with each other, and the peace and harmony of the land. Only when we come together with those people we share the land with will we be able to build a sustainable future for us all. I see Canada in the future not to be a colonial nation-state, as it is now, but as a state of nations respecting the agreements that were made by all the newcomers on our land.
The islands in the Ottawa River were always an important sacred site for all Anishinaabe people, from the Atlantic to the Rockies, some 85 nations, for more than 10,000 years. There are artifacts all throughout the Ottawa Valley that are 6,000 years old or more. This most sacred area, the Chaudière Falls, the Great Kettle, and the islands in the Ottawa River, has to be re-established as a spiritual centre of our nations. For our cultures of balance and harmony, loving and caring, are necessary for the future of not only our indigenous people, but all the people who share the land with us. Douglas J. Cardinal is an Algonquin elder and Ottawa-based architect whose designs are noted for reflecting the landscape around them. He is perhaps best known for designing the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.