Collective Navigation: Towards (re)Conciliation Through Communal Experience

This thesis addresses our shared patterns of behaviors, interactions, cognitive constructs and understanding by exploring how we perceive, interpret, orient ourselves and navigate the world. What is regarded as mainstream culture is investigated and questioned by bringing together western and indigenous knowledge in order to examine the way we interpret the world and beyond. Through in-depth analyses of the controversial Samuel de Champlain monument located at Nepean Point in Ottawa, Ontario, this research and proposed projects cultivate a direction towards (re)conciliation not only for the monument of Champlain and its Anishinaabe scout, but for indigenous and mainstream societies collectively. By employing a holistic approach that recognizes the strengths of mainstream empirically based scientific knowledge and indigenous cosmological worldviews, architectural interventions, at both the personal and communal level, provide both a tool and platform for storytelling while engaging and experiencing celestial phenomena in the pursuit of cultural resonance and (re)conciliation.