YK Pop-Up Park, Yellowknife

Located in Yellowknife’s Old Town in Canada’s Northwest Territories, LINE is a landscape architecture intervention that combines Indigenous worldviews of cyclical time, the tradition of storytelling as navigation, and the ways in which Yellowknifers move through the landscape to create a powerful metaphor for the ways in which time, space, and landscape were traditionally perceived: as living.

Old Town is the historic heart of Yellowknife, a city where more than a quarter of the population identify as “Aboriginal”. Increasing tourism and resource exploration has led to rapid demographic change, and it is essential that this heritage landscape, and the traditions that have shaped it, are not lost.

This project provides a critique of current heritage place-making and planning methods in Old Town, gives rise to a new and unconventional way of interpreting Yellowknife’s heritage as living, and uses human memories as a qualitative methodology and base for landscape practice. It pushes Canadian landscape architects to consider, in our work, how the highly experiential processes of storytelling and experience could be prioritized over mapping or plans, particularly in regards to heritage and Indigenous landscapes.

Thesis Project 2019 Advisor: Liat Margolis

All images shown belong to author.

LINE: Celebrating Yellowknife’s Living Heritage

Wiíliídeh (Yellowknife River): Yamozha broke a beaver dam blocking the flow of the river with his snow shovel, which became a giant spruce tree at the mouth of the river.

Kweti̧ni̧’ah (Bear Rock): Yamoria beavers that were terrorizing tacked their hides to the hillside, scars today.

Cultural Context

From left: Traditional Knowledge mapping projects by the Yellowknives Dene First Nation document an oral culture. Traditional stories describing physical landscape markers are used for navigation in cyclical human migrations over the treeline in the NWT. These markers are ongoing sacred sites.

Cyclical time: Indigenous worldview

CULTURAL CONTEXT: A CYCLICAL WAY OF LIFE

Research and analysis of the Dene way of life shows a focus on seasons, cycles, and annual migrations. Stories, based in memory and passed down from generations, are used as tools to navigate the landscape and, over time, are converted to knowledge by moving through the land. In Indigenous worldviews, time is cyclical and repetitive; a story is a line that connects present to past. A cyclical time scale approach presents a culturally-sensitive opportunity to understand, interpret, and celebrate Yellowknife’s living heritage.

Linear time: Western worldview

YELLOWKNIFE BAY

Scale: 1:15,000

UNDERSTANDING LANDSCAPE HERITAGE THROUGH NDIGENOUS VS. WESTERN LENS

Left: In a Western worldview, time is linear and indicated by progression. Yellowknife’s Intercultural Heritage and Placemaking Plan (2018) proposes that historic plaques be used to celebrate the rich history of Old Town. A review of existing plaques reveals a design that offers only brief glimpses of time on a post- colonial linear scale, removing the viewer from the iconic, rocky landscape. A Western view of landscape is of a continuous surface to see across, preferably aerially, through a map, or from up high, through a singular lens or experience. Right: In an Indigenous worldview, a landscape is seen as a meshwork of interconnected paths, each created by memory, rooted in experience, and passed down in story.

PROPOSAL: A CYCLICAL METAPHOR TO CELEBRATE LIVING HERITAGE LINE rejects the western perspectives of time, space, and landscape typically used in heritage planning practices. It is a metaphor for the transmission of traditional knowledge, using storytelling, memory, and ideas of cyclical time to create a meaningful experience of Old Town’s physical landscape and living heritage. It allows the visitor to engage with previous occupants of the landscape through a simple, semi-permanent painted line on the three major rock formations in Old Town: McAvoy Rock, The Rock, and Niven Hill.

POST-PROPOSAL HERITAGE ANALYSIS

The greater implication of this project for the field of landscape architecture is to question how we, in our practice, meaningfully engage with Indigenous worldviews; perceptions of time, space, and permanence; and living heritage of a place.

Photorealistic Render

Geoprocessing Analysis

ArcGIS Pro, Adobe Illustrator. Hydrological analysis of the Don River Watershed in Toronto using ArcGIS Pro reveals headwater locations that are protected by substantial vegetative cover, and therefore could be targeted for photoremediation efforts.

MODEL-MAKING