TLA’AMIN HOUSING ARCHITECTURE AND HOME TERRITORIES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: INVISIBLE SPACES SHAPING HISTORICAL INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

Abstract

A revolution took place in Sliammon, BC, between the late 1800s and 1970s. As with colonialism elsewhere in Canada, this included changes in Indigenous religion, health, governance, and every other mechanism of life, including architecture. By the 1970s, the Tla’amin, who were once longhouse people, came to live in two-level former military base houses from Ladner, BC. Using oral history holdings at the former Sliammon Treaty Office and personal interviews, the impact that changes in housing architecture had on individual, family, community life and relationships to environmental territories, is reviewed. Tla’amin housing is first seen as a site for displaying personal power and territory, both physically and metaphorically in stories. Through decades of housing architecture changes, including a transition to single-family dwellings and then to segregated spaces, including bedrooms, consequent shifts in power and authority impeded the ability to pass on cultural knowledge through intergenerational sharing, which once happened in open spaces within the longhouse or one-room shack. Additionally, residential school attendance disrupted family relationships and transformed how Tla’amin young people carried out coming of age ceremonies. Throughout these challenges, Tla’amin people used strategies to maintain cultural continuity and Indigenous knowledge, including emphasizing accessible ceremonies, enforcing intergenerational relationships, ensuring strong connections to their territories and natural environments both through travel and symbolism, and encouraging youth to maintain knowledge that could be found in the environments and within themselves. This dissertation examines the Tla’amin relationship to created and naturalspaces, developing a deeper understanding of human–architecture and human-land relationships. Additionally, it demonstrates historical approaches to Indigenous education. The Tla’amin have their own residential school stories, and this dissertation reveals some of them, and the impact these particular experiences had on the community. Oral history is extensively used