(C) Minnesota Reformer
This story was originally published by Minnesota Reformer and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Indigenous Design Camp builds up future architects • Minnesota Reformer [1]
['Izzy Wagener', 'Audrey Henderson', 'Frank Jossi', 'Energy News Network', 'Max Nesterak', 'More From Author', '- August', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus']
Date: 2025-08-01
Sam Olbekson estimates that he may be one of less than two dozen licensed Indigenous architects in the U.S. With the Indigenous Design Camp, he hopes to change that.
“Indigenous designers and architects are so important to creating the future of our communities that we decided to find a way to introduce the profession to youth,” said Olbekson, the founder of Full Circle Indigenous Planning + Design.
Olbekson created the camp with fellow architect Mike Laverdure to show Native youth that architecture can be an accessible career path. Seven junior high and high school students participated in its second year.
In a classroom on the third floor of the Dunwoody College of Technology, students showed off their final projects to their parents, wearing the name of the camp on laser-cut wooden medallions strung with brightly colored ribbons. It was the culmination of a week spent touring Indigenous architecture projects, learning about design concepts and building their own creations.
Jessica Garcia Fritz, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Minnesota, helped plan the curriculum — titled “At Home in the Homelands.” Students drew and modelled their own scale sleeping spaces with cardboard, combining them to form a communal space.
In a project called “Smudge Ring,” Garcia Fritz said, “individual spaces are talking to each other. And it allows for a certain sequence, movements. But it also has Indigenous iconography as well.”
Olbekson said architecture is a vital way of communicating cultural identity.
“It’s just underscoring the importance of Indigenous people designing for Indigenous communities. For too long, architecture and planning has been something that has been imposed on us, rather than coming from within. And so we have wonderful cultures, beautiful design, arts, histories that can all impact how we design for our communities,” Olbekson said.
Olbekson has worked on projects like the Minneapolis American Indian Center and Wakan Tipi Center in St. Paul.
For now, the one-week camp is mostly limited to students in the Twin Cities area, but the organizers are seeking to include younger students, Indigenous nations and schools. For Garcia Fritz, a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, the camp is about giving Indigenous kids the opportunities she didn’t have.
“For many of us, we were the only Indigenous people in our architecture classes. And so this was a way to show that, yeah, there is a collective of Indigenous designers, and to make that something that’s much larger,” Garcia Fritz said.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/08/01/indigenous-design-camp-builds-up-future-architects/
Published and (C) by Minnesota Reformer
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/MnReformer/
