This Minneapolis Indigenous Design Camp for teens is the first of its kind in the U.S.
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A group of teens cuts cardboard with X-ACTO Knives. They will soon shape this cardboard into architectural models of their bedrooms.
Behind them in a classroom at the Dunwoody College of Technology, large windows frame the Minneapolis cityscape — a sampling of building types through the ages, from the early 20th-century Basilica of St. Mary to the IDS skyscraper built in 1973.
“It’s my first time doing something in architectural-related study,” says Dominic Stewart of Burnsville.
“I’m excited to get that hands-on experience,” says Carsyn Johnson of Elk River.
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They are here for the weeklong Indigenous Design Camp, the first camp of its kind in the U.S. The goal is to teach Indigenous teens about career options in architecture and design, a field where Native Americans are underrepresented.
Indigenous architects
Two of the founders of the new camp — architects and friends Mike Laverdure and Sam Olbekson — estimate that there are only about 30 Indigenous architects total in the U.S.
Laverdure is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and a partner at DSGW Architects as well as the president of First American Design Studio. Olbekson is a citizen of the White Earth Nation and founded the firm Full Circle Indigenous Planning and Design. They are the only two practicing Native architects in Minnesota.
reflects urban Indigenous identity“The need for creating a space for kids to become designers, Indigenous designers, is great,” says Laverdure, who has wanted to start this camp for years. “Representation matters for these kids to see us as architects and designers. A lot of us who grew up in reservations or urban Indigenous communities only see a few career types.”
“This is the first time anyone has ever done this in the U.S.,” Olbekson adds. “It’s the right time for Indigenous communities, tribal communities, nonprofits, to really take a self-initiated approach to design, to hire architects to understand the value and the importance of designing and operating a project from an Indigenous lens.”
The campers
The campers are Indigenous teens ages 14-18 from the metro area. They will be constructing architectural models all week. Campers will also tour the University of Minnesota School of Architecture and local architecture firms.
They will also visit the American Indian Cultural Corridor on Franklin Avenue, where both Laverdure and Olbekson have designed buildings, as well as another Olbekson project, the recently completed expansion of the Red Lake Nation College downtown.
Olbekson says, “to actually go and see [the buildings] and see the impact that they’re having on the community, not only as individual buildings, but how they’re forming an identity for the American Indian Cultural Corridor and how these projects are supporting education, economic development, community building, cultural development, and youth and elder spaces, I think is going to be a great way for them to understand the impact of what design, urban design, interiors, landscape, can have on creating a healthy, Indigenous urban community.”
The camp began Monday morning with a welcome from Laverdure, Olbekson and University of Minnesota assistant architecture professor Jessica Garcia Fritz, a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Fritz also helped start the camp.
“If you think about your home reservations, or your urban communities, you think about all the buildings that are there,” Laverdure told the class, “Ninety-nine percent of all the buildings built that Indigenous people sit in are not designed by indigenous designers. They’re designed by other people who don’t have a stake in the game, who don’t really have a connection to that community.”
Laverdure continued, “When you have Indigenous designers be a part of that process, what happens is that those buildings have a special kind of connection to the communities and that makes those buildings extra special.”
Indigenous architecture, past and present
Next came a presentation on Indigenous architecture, past and present, by Tammy Eagle Bull, who did a video call from her home in Arizona. Eagle Bull is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation of Pine Ridge, South Dakota. In 1994, she became the first Native woman in the U.S. to become a licensed architect.
Camper Carsyn Johnson says this fact caught her by surprise.
“I was surprised about it, though, a little disappointed, because I feel like as a society, we should move further ahead a little bit,” Johnson says.
For the remainder of the first day of camp, Jessica Garcia Fritz guided campers in a design exercise to create their sleep space or bedroom.
First, they taped 10 by 10-foot squares on the classroom floor to help them visualize the scale. Then they sketched blueprints of their bedrooms. Finally, they cut and scored cardboard to build shoebox-size models. As the week progresses, the campers will join their models to create collective spaces as well as design larger communal spaces as a group.
“One of the things Tammy Eagle Bull had said this morning was, ‘I wish that a camp like this had existed when I was young.’ I think that’s the sentiment among many of us,” Garcia Fritz says.
”Part of the motivation behind this is to be able to show Indigenous high school students what those pathways are, to bring them into the environments so that we can have more representation. I think that many of us can maybe speak to the fact that we may have been the only Indigenous people in our classes at the time. Our instructors probably didn’t know how to work within what we may have wanted to do. I think that’s changing.”
Garcia Fritz, Laverdure and Olbekson hope this camp is the first of many. One of the goals is to expand the camp to greater Minnesota.
“Right now, it’s in the Twin Cities, but there are so many Indigenous communities regionally, up north and even in other states that could really benefit from this,” Olbekson says.
“Long term, we want to create a space where five to 10 years from now, we’ve got 10, 15, 20, Native designers that are out there and being a force for change,” Laverdure says.
The camp ends Friday when campers present their final architectural models.
