Christina VarvisThe construction of a $30 million neighbour to the Education buildings has been proposed to the Government of Alberta.
In University of Alberta President David Turpin’s installment ceremony on Nov. 16, he announced the proposal of Maskwa House of Learning, which will serve as a centre for support of Indigenous students. The building will be located beside Education North, with its roof reaching just under the Education mural.
The Maskwa House of Learning has been a project in the works since at least 2005 — only the name is new. Extensive planning refer to it as its previous working title, “Gathering Place.” Recent major consultations for the project occurred in 2009, 2012 and 2014, but the project wasn’t put into motion until the U of A was under the new leadership of Turpin. In the past years, the project has involved consultations from “easily a couple hundred of people,” including members from university governance, university faculty, and local First Nation groups, Deputy Provost Wendy Rogers said.
The Maskwa House of Learning will serve to connect Indigenous people and students with non-Indigenous people on campus so they may learn about each other in a more open and attractive space. It will hold Indigenous ceremonies, presentations and events — right now, there’s no space on campus to hold these. It will also hold services for Indigenous students, which are currently in second floor SUB’s Aboriginal Students’ Services Centre, Rogers said. The building is not programmed as a teaching and learning space, but it will connect to Education, which will give it access to classroom space if needed.
Campus is currently missing a significant Aboriginal presence, Rogers said.
“As you walk around campus, it’s not apparent that the University of Alberta has as strong of links as it does with our local Aboriginal communities,” she said.
The Maskwa House of Learning will aim to change that, she added.
Indigenous enrolment at the U of A is currently between 2.5 and 3 per cent, which doesn’t cut it for a university where 10 per cent of the local population is Indigenous, Dean of Native Studies Brendan Hokowhitu said.
“I think this will make a difference in terms of visibility and (Indigenous students seeing themselves) on campus,” Hokowhitu said. “There’s a long way to go, but I think this is really going to help.”
The funding for the Maskwa House of Learning won’t take away from the university’s academic renewal priority — the building proposal is more of a specific request for funding in addition to the regular mission of the university from the provincial government. There are no funds being redirected away from regular programming, Rogers said.
The proposal sent to the Government of Alberta is more of a position paper by Turpin — an argument as to why campus should have a building dedicated to Indigenous support services. The building is “shovel-ready,” if the U of A received the required funding today, the building would be open in one year, Rogers said.
“What we need is $30 million,” she said. “So the first ask is to the Government of Alberta, and whatever amount they choose to give us will go in our House of Learning piggy bank. Then we will go about other ways of raising the rest of the money … It is completely ready to go, and when our piggy bank is full, we’ll build it.”
