Kelly Edzerza-Bapty

• Comment: Either populate or remove the empty 'Awards' and 'Publications' sections. Thanks. DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:32, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

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Kelly Edzerza-Bapty, is a member of the Tāłtān Nation in the Northwest corner of British Columbia, and currently resides in Golden. She is first Indigenous Female Architect from a BC Nation to achieve the AIBC designation and is the founding principal of Obsidian Architecture, an Indigenous owned and operated firm that specializes in architecture and design in the communities across British Columbia and Yukon. Through her practice, Kelly focuses on Generational Architecture, a term coined by herself, that works towards “defining resilience and sustainability [in architecture] through an Indigenous lens”. In addition to her work in architecture, Kelly is also the co-creator of ReMatriate, an organization that seeks to render Indigenous Women visibly empowered.

Tāłtān Nation

Bapty is a member of the Tāłtān Nation, stewards of the Strikine watershed that feeds out to the Pacific Ocean. The traditional and unceded land base comprises of 11.24 percent of British Columbia’s “claimed” land base. The Tāłtān Nation holds a “Declaration of Nation” from 1910 in which their Nannock (Head Chief) and 84 other members of the Tāłtān Nation state that their land is separate from the land that is presently referred to as British Columbia. Both Bapty’s Great-Great-Grandfather (Nannock) and Great-Grandfather are signatories of the declaration.

Bapty is the granddaughter of the Tahlogo Dena Etzenlee Matriarch, of the Tu’da Che’yonne (Wolf-Eagle) Clan, a matrilineal-based society where property and hunting areas are passed through the woman’s lines. As the youngest daughter of the youngest daughter from a family of twenty children and a member of the Wolf-Eagle Clan, Bapty has an obligation to support the future generations by assuring their strength is carried forward by mending and regenerating their cultural continuum.

Early life and education

Bapty grew up in Inuvik, Northwest territories while spending a lot of her youth with her family in Telegraph Creek. Her experience living in northern, remote communities revealed to her “how a single space can serve multiple purposes and how its design could affect the mood. As a child, she remembers being very conscious of how a room worked and the way it made her feel.”

Bapty’s mother noticed her potential in design and encouraged her to pursue architecture as a career. As a result, Bapty attended the University of Alberta to receive a bachelor in design. Following her undergrad degree, Bapty joined an architectural firm in Whitehorse where she was exposed to a many First Nations’ projects and was introduced to her potential role of being a “cultural maker” through architecture.

Following her work in Whitehorse, Bapty attended the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (UBC SALA) for her master’s degree in architecture in 2010. During her time at UBC, Bapty realized there was very little information or mentorship offered at the school regarding Indigenous designs and structures. As a result, Bapty had to develop her own architectural study project and do a lot of groundwork in research to understand land titles and policies, how different First Nations’ governance works, and how traditional structures are built and maintained.

Her studies at UBC and personal life experiences led her to realize the disposable nature of building in North America, leading her to develop her own architectural design approach, generational architecture.

Career

Architecture

In 2019, Bapty became the first female Indigenous architect from a BC nation to receive the AIBC Architect designation and is the founding principal architect at Obsidian Architecture.

Obsidian Architecture is a female-first, Indigenous-owned and -operated firm that works primarily with First Nations across the Yukon and British Columbia. Bapty leads the office through a slow, community-led design approach to create regionally specific designs that speak to, and serve, the needs of the specific Nations. Bapty prioritizes this slowed-down approach to architecture to allow for the time needed to sit down and built trust with the community that she and her firm is working with.

'"I ask for different groups of elders, often in gender split, and local Indigenous language speakers, as well as the members that are running the programming in communities. We try to do at least a full-day workshop with youth in the community each time we come in: we’ll run model-building workshops, and design-thinking sessions with iPads, markers, laptops with 3D building files. These youthful contributions to the design process, programming, and final project are valuable. In this participatory approach, we’re thinking about [buildings] in terms of being in place for several generations, of having that longevity and durability. We are investing in ‘generational architecture’ and ‘generational building.’”

Generational Architecture

Through her work, Bapty has coined the term "Generational Architecture" which is "a way to consider what it means to design communities and buildings that will be here for our future generations." This approach to design is a response to Bapty's discoveries at UBC SALA where she was exposed to the extractive and disposable nature of North American building in combination with the reservation system, status systems, residential schooling, missionary work, and more ways that Indigenous cultures, places, and languages have been brought to near extinction in many regions of Canada. By designing with generational architecture rooted in creating a rich foundation of landscape, ancestry, and language, Bapty sees the potential for indigenous communities to reestablish their presence and re-build their communities for generations to come.

An example of Bapty's approach to generational architecture is seen through her, innovation n response to BC's accelerating history of wildfires, Bapty had the opportunity to reconsider their approach to working "in a world where natural disasters and environmental changes are becoming more frequent". Bapty and her team developed a strategy to harvest wood charred from the forest fires for construction which were ultimately kiln-dried timber once the burnt portions are removed. This holistic approach to salvaging the wood not only reduced the risk of future fires in the area, but it also accelerates the forest's regeneration acting as a restorative approach to land management. This strategy was put into use for the design of the Nzen’man’ Child and Family Development Centre for the Nlaka’pamux community in the southern interior of BC.

Nzen'man' means bird's nest in the Nlaka’pamux nɬeʔkepmxcín language, and represents the conceptual form of a bird hugging its nest that the project aims to take. The project work began in 2017 with the commission to design a new building that brought together all of the organization's services into one building. However, after the destruction of the community of Lytton and the Lytton First Nation reserves from the Lytton Wildfire in 2021, the project had to be re-evaluated with a more urgent need to be completed. The project was relocated to be built in the Inklucksheen Reserve along the Fraser River which consists of a "land-bermed form that backs into the hillside like a shieshkin (pit house) with red, rammed earth walls—a local material and naturally fire-proof construction." The pit house was then used as a model of vernacular architecture from that region, which was contributed to the inspiration for the building form and structure. The use of the charred timber in combination with the vernacular form of the pit house and Indigenous and passive design strategies results with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, serving as a model of "Generational Architecture".

Advocacy

In addition to Bapty's work as an architect, she is also the initiating co-founder of ReMatriate Collective, an organization dedicated to empowering Indigenous women. The organization began as an Indigenous Wom(y/x)ns visual identity campaign and developed into a collective advocating for Indigenous women. "The Collective believes it is important to enable Indigenous women to control the visual representation of their identities through active participation in the online space" and is composed of a diverse group of female fashion designers, singers, models, architects, artists, and advocates.The formation of the collective was a direct response to the stereotypes and appropriation of Indigenous cultures that has been taking away Indigenous peoples' rights and ability to authentically represent their cultures such as Fashion designer DSquared's disrespectful "DSquaw" collection. Through a collection of online visual arts through social media and decolonizing movement, ReMatriate intends to move the conversation around Indigenous women in the media to a more positive space by putting Indigenous women in charge of how they are represented and portrayed. Bapty is also involved in youth mentorship and advocacy for environmental and indigenous rights.

Select Architectural Project

Name	Location	Completed	Description	Client	Collaborators
Kaska Dena: Cultural Centre for Daylu Dena Community	Lower Post, BC	2016 - under construction	27,000-square-foot facility that will serve the Kaska Dena Nation by providing recreational, cultural, and administrative spaces.	Kaska Dena Nation	Obsidian Architecture, SMK Architect
Nzen’man’ Child and Family Development Centre	Inklucksheen Reserve, BC	2017 - under construction	Designed to bring all of the Nlaka’pamux community organizations into one building facility.	Nlaka’pamux community	Obsidian Architecture
Golden House		2017			Indigenous Design Studio