New Architecture on Indigenous Lands takes readers on a virtual tour of recent Native building projects in Canada and the western and midwestern United States. With close attention to details of design, questions of tradition, and cultural issues, and through interviews with designers and their Native clients, it provides an in-depth introduction to the new Native architecture in its many guises.
“Black Elk speaks of the “square boxes” his people were forced into, and Winona LaDuke of the “boxes of mints” on Native lands. As long as the government was deciding what tribal buildings should look like, Native custom and culture were bound to be boxed in—or boxed out. But in the post-1996 era of more flexible housing policies, Native peoples have assumed a key role in the design of buildings on tribal lands. The result is an architecture that finally accords with the traditions and ideas of the people who inhabit it.”