Allan Teramura
Allan Teramura, FRAIC, an Ottawa architect advocating for healthy and sustainable Aboriginal communities, is the 77th President of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada following a formal ceremony on Friday.
About 120 guests attended the investiture ceremony at the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health in Ottawa. Award-winning Canadian author Joseph Boyden delivered the keynote address.
Guests included RAIC members, the RAIC board of directors, representatives from Parliament Hill, government departments and First Nations communities, as well as allied professionals with an interest in the built environment.
?As architects, I think we would all agree that losing traditional building crafts and knowledge of ways of organizing physical space can be as corrosive to a society as the loss of a spoken language,? Mr. Teramura said in his investiture speech. ?The built environment in Indigenous communities tends to be discussed in terms of housing issues, but in my view the problem is compounded by the absence of cultural identity, and this is seldom discussed.?  ?At a time when talk of reconciliation is growing, our profession is in a position to ? and, therefore, is obligated to ? look at ways to help address injustices, not by imposing our ideas, but by listening and promoting the professional competencies that already exist in Indigenous communities.?
 Mr. Teramura sees similarities between the living conditions on reserves to the internment camps where Ja...