Lecture by Naomi Ratte & Amina Lalor

The last event of the Fall 2022 Laurentian Architecture Lecture Series is scheduled for Thursday Nov.10 at 5:30 pm in the Lecture Hall. The guest lecturers will be Naomi Ratte and Amina Lalor, who will speak about their work and Indigenous design and research. This lecture is presented by the Ontario Association of Architects, and is free and open to all.

Naomi Ratte is a member of Peguis First Nation and a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate at the University of Manitoba. Her practicum work focused on understanding Anishinaabe foodways from her ancestral community of St. Peter’s/Peguis. Her work explored the connection between food, ecology, culture, and community. More specifically, Naomi studied the condition of the Netley-Libau Marsh, a traditionally significant harvesting area for the people of St. Peters before the illegal removal of the community from north of present-day Selkirk, Manitoba. As a result of the study, Naomi proposed planning and design solutions to respond to ways in which the devastated marsh could be rehabilitated through an Indigenous led process. Since 2017, Naomi has worked with NVision Insight Group Inc. She primarily works in the Canadian Arctic developing territorial park master, management, and heritage appreciation plans that are based in Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (Inuit traditional knowledge). She has been a part of project teams that have received the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects national award of excellence. Projects include the Top of the World Highway Interpretive Plan (Dawson, Yukon) in 2020 and most recently Agguttinni Territorial Park Master Plan (Clyde River, Nunavut) in 2022.

Amina Lalor is a Vietnamese-Irish-Métis designer and researcher currently working as an intern architect at Smoke Architecture. Her Métis roots are from Red River and she is a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. Since 2018, she has been working as a researcher at the University of Guelph to help create “Nokom’s House,” a proposed Indigenous land-based research lab led by Indigenous scholars Dr. Kim Anderson, Dr. Sheri Longboat, and Dr. Brittany Luby. Amina holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture from the University of Waterloo where she has also recently taught as an adjunct instructor. As a master’s student, she was one of three co-founders of the initiative Treaty Lands, Global Stories @treatylands.globalstories a student-led initiative at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture advocating for a more diverse and inclusive architectural curriculum that de-centres Euro-Western values, reflects the diversity within the student body, and responds to the Indigenous and settler-colonial context that we all operate within. Working from the perspective of a mixed settler, refugee, and Indigenous designer, Amina’s continued research explores the meaning of practicing architecture “in a good way” on Indigenous lands within a violently imposed settler-colonial context.

Please note that this lecture qualifies for two (2) Ontario Association of Architects Continuing Education Structured Learning Hours.

See you there!