Alberta-born Indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal provided local media a sneak peak at an upcoming exhibit titled UNCEDED: Voices of The Land to be on display at the Pendennis Building in Edmonton beginning next March.

Cardinal is a world renowned architect, designer, activist and philosopher and says he’s thrilled to personally bring the exhibit to the city.

UNCEDED: Voices of The Land brings together the past, present, and future of the Indigenous experience as seen through the eyes and minds of 18 distinguished Indigenous architects and designers from across Turtle Island (North America). They tell their stories of Indigeneity, resilience, sovereignty and colonization.

Lewis Cardinal is the co-lead of UNCEDED and tells us what to expect.

“UNCEDED: Voices of the Land exhibit, itself, is a powerful, immersive experience. It’ll follow a curvilinear process, and in that, you will see video and audio of 18 Indigenous architects and how they apply their Indigenous worldviews and cultures into the architecture that they make, and in so many ways that architecture is really art in its finest definition. And they tell their stories and how the journeys they’ve made and how their creative process is so important to them. But it also shares a lot of that deeper knowledge about our common humanity, which I think is really important. Now, the exhibit then allows that immersive process to help foster transformation. So that transformation within the individual means connecting with their own roots in terms of who they are, but also transforming Indigenous people through the experience itself.”

Lewis says they intend to have the exhibit open to the public for as long as a year. He says there is a plan for an Indigenous art gallery in the building and Chef Shane Chartrand will have an Indigenous restaurant set up year-round.

Lewis says he’s hoping the Pendennis will become the hub for Indigenous art and expression in the city.

This will be the first project to be hosted inside the historic Pendennis Building, built in the early 1900’s on Jasper Ave. The stunning brick building, now Métis owned, has been restored as close to its original architecture as possible.

The Pendennis Building bridges the worlds of old and new architecture so it is only fitting that its first public event be a celebration of Indigenous architecture presented through a breathtaking multi-media installation, reads a press statement.

Lorraine Bodnarek, co-owner of the Pendennis Hotel Development said “We are thrilled to host the UNCEDED: Voices of the Land exhibit as it debuts here in Douglas Cardinal’s home province. We do believe it will be hugely educational. I hope that everyone who experiences it will learn more about the history of the Indigenous people. We are on Treaty 6 lands, so I hope it leads to relationship building while being both educational and entertaining.”

Guy Blood was invited to the exhibit preview by Douglas Cardinal and is excited to check out the exhibit when it opens in March.

“This exhibit is going to be part of letting society that we all live in get to know more and more about the Indigenous culture and what it can contribute to the society that we live in. And I really believe that the more we know about the Indigenous cultures and habits and beliefs and practices that we will develop our society way better. There’s so much more we can learn from Indigenous peoples.”

Led by Douglas Cardinal and co-curated by Gerald McMaster and David Fortin, UNCEDED speaks to the contribution of Indigenous architects in shaping our world with their vision, creativity and technical skills, but above all through their connection to the land and traditional ways of knowing.

Douglas, 87, encourages young Indigenous people to go into architecture.

“I feel that architecture is a field that we need more of our Indigenous young people in. And particularly if they combine the teachings of their Elders with the teachings of the profession. They are going to be the architects of the future because the architects of the past were not concerned about Mother Earth or their environment. In many ways, they weren’t concerned enough about people. That’s why we’re in a disastrous mess we’re in right now.”

The exhibit debuted in Venice in 2018 at the Venice Architecture Biennale and most recently concluded a time at the Canadian Museum of History in February 2021.

More information on this exhibit can be found on the pendennisbuilding.com website.