EDMONTON—Walking through the University of Alberta’s north campus, Robin Howse can’t help but see the hidden history wrapped up in the buildings and artwork all around her.

For a summer class in 2017, the native studies student was tasked with building a website that would examine a single slice of campus to reveal the Indigenous and colonial context behind it.

But she couldn’t settle on just one site.

“I was a little bit over ambitious, and chose all the sites,” Howse admitted. “I thought if I, as a native study student, don’t know about these sites, how do we expect anyone else on campus to know?”

Nearly two years later, her project, called pîtos-mâmitoneyihtamowin UAlberta, plots a 27 point walking map of sites around the university’s grounds, adding layers of perspective to sites and artifacts that staff, students and passersby encounter every day.

“At a lot of events now, you hear people doing treaty acknowledgements. They will acknowledge that we’re on Treaty 6 territory, but a lot of people don’t even what that means,” Howse added. “Knowing families have been living here long before Edmonton was ever a city, or even thought of being a city, really changes the way you think about this place and how you interact in it.”

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The Cree term in the name translates to “reimagine,” which is precisely the intention Howse had for users exploring her site.

“I noticed when you know another language, specifically another Indigenous language, or if you’re learning an Indigenous language, it really changes the way you think about things and how you conceptualize the world,” Howse explained.

While she said she did a lot of digging to uncover the overlooked history of the sites, Howse, 27, sees it as more of a community effort, having drawn on the research of academics and students at the university to help fill in the blanks.

An email address listed with each entry also allows visitors to share their own experiences and thoughts on the highlighted spaces to further the conversation around them.

“The website is ultimately this hub for alternative perspectives of all these different sites on campus, where people can submit their own stories or their own perspectives to create a community dialogue,” Howse added. “There’s more than one story to every space.”

Each of the points on the map are categorized according to perspectives those sites represent, such as Indigenous and colonial interpretations of history. There are also links to news stories and videos attached to each entry to provide background information.

Some sites and artwork are flagged for holding Indigenous names that may or may not connect to the culture or history behind the title, while those that only seem to represent Indigeneity on the surface are labelled problematic.

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And then there are sites like the Sweetgrass Bear, an Indigenous art sculpture the University installed in the campus quad that’s thought to reflect relationship building between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

It was unveiled in the summer of 2016 with a pipe ceremony, attended by members of the Indigenous community and the university’s leadership.

“Some people see that as a really big milestone — that the university is really committed to reconciliation, listening to Indigenous voices and valuing Indigenous art,” Howse said of the sculpture. “Whereas other people see it as a sort of a tokenism, where the university is sidestepping its responsibilities to address more ingrained, structural issues by simply (installing) a statue.

“That’s the hard thing about categorizing,” Howse added. “It’s a very linear way of thinking and not everything fits nicely into these little boxes.”

But in highlighting these sites, and including diverse perspectives around them, Howse’s work also acts as a tool for fostering positive relations, explained Kirsten Lindquist, a PhD student with the university’s faculty of native studies. She was the instructor who tasked Howse with the assignment.

“It’s not only retelling these stories, and reminding people of the power of place of Indigeneity on campus,” Lindquist explained. “It’s also a place for teaching tools in relationship building.”

Noting vandalism seen at Indigenous sites on campus in years past, namely a teepee and Red River cart close to where the Sweetgrass Bear stands, Lindquist added that project sheds light on some of the immediate problems facing Indigenous communities.

“This also addresses racism that Indigenous students experience … on campus,” she said, “reminding us that we share these spaces, and (asks) how can we address the experiences of Indigenous students on campus.”

Just how far the site will go toward accomplishing those goals is still uncharted territory.

Howse, who is preparing for her final year of study in the program, has taken the assignment on as a personal project outside of class, and says there’s still more mapping, researching and storytelling to be done.

“I won’t be at the university forever,” she added. ‘I’m hoping that this will light that spark in someone else, and they will want share this information so we can keep it going.”

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