Towards Home: Inuit & Sámi Placemaking

Towards Home / / Ruovttu Guvlui, an Indigenous-led publication, explores how Inuit, Sámi, and other communities across the Arctic are creating self-determined spaces. It is informed by the perspectives of a group of Inuit, Sámi, and settler co-editors who share the ambition to promote northern Indigenous forms of sovereignty shaped by an understanding of the land as home. The project emphasizes caring for and living on the land as a way of being, and celebrates practices of spacemaking and placemaking that empower Indigenous communities. (angirramut) in Inuktitut, or ruovttu guvlui in Sámi, can be translated as ‘towards home’. To move towards home is to reflect on where northern Indigenous people find home, on what their connections to their land means, and on what these relationships could look like into the future. The publication is framed by these three concepts: Home, Land, and Future. It contains essays, artworks, photographs, personal narratives, and other forms that express Indigenous notions of home, land, kinship, design, and memory. The publication ultimately asks: What could home become across Inuit Nunangat, Sápmi, and the North more generally when defined by Indigenous architects and designers? Where do homelands begin? This publication was conceived in parallel to research, workshops, and an exhibition at the CCA, Montréal.