The ideal community would be one designed by the people living in it to reflect and support their values, traditions and lifestyle, if you ask Dr. Terry Fonstad, BE, MSc, PhD, P.Eng., P.Ag, FEC, FGC (Hon).
From his experience, he has seen more subdivisions designed and built for other reasons than what he would consider people-centred communities. It was his experience early in his career working on-site at First Nations communities that reinforced this to him.
Early engineering experience
Before becoming an Associate Dean of Research and Partnerships at the University of Saskatchewan, Fonstad worked in construction to satisfy his interest in understanding how things work. He recognized this interest was leading him toward an education in engineering, eventually earning a PhD. It wasn’t just engineering that intrigued him, but the funding of projects and the infrastructure that resulted because of funding requirements.
Working as a young engineer during the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s shaped his pursuits today. During this time, First Nations communities were building schools and water and wastewater systems were required to support those facilities. Often, there was also a housing shortage in the community. He explained that designs of subdivisions from that time typically reflected more urban designs that minimized costs by placing houses as close together as possible. This arrangement was often in stark contrast to how homes in the community where traditionally placed and reflected a very different social fabric.
Learning traditional knowledge
By working on-site and through his relationships with Indigenous people, he learned some traditional knowledge. Some of what was shared with him were cultural considerations around water. Due to its ability to support life, there are traditional practices for protecting and using it that are practical while embracing water’s sacredness. Other practices relate to homes. For example, a home may have been placed to face the south so the doorway could be left open for the sun to warm the interior for much of the day. A collection of homes might have been placed in an arc to create a central space with a sense of community to support family interactions and to provide protection from outside threats. The community designs often demonstrated the importance of women, particularly the matriarchs, caring for and guiding younger generations at home.
What traditionally had been observed and understood about nature and community and then practised to keep people safe, secure and fulfilled was passed from one generation to the next. While this knowledge may not have been shared in a scientific manner, scientific reasons can be found that explain why those methods are best practice.
“There are just things that these communities and peoples did that were all for very, very good reasons,” said Fonstad.
This experience led him to a realization about the infrastructure that had been developed for First Nations communities based on cost models and designs for urban Canada.
“The long and the short of it is, it’s almost like recolonizing,” said Fonstad.
Designing for a community
Costs are a very important consideration of engineers developing designs, but it seemed to Fonstad that costs would not escalate unreasonably by making slight, but significant changes to adapt a design to what is important to a community.
“Something as simple as engineers placing a water treatment plant in the centre of the community as a place of honour to truly represent the importance of that piece of infrastructure to the community,” said Fonstad.
“It doesn’t cost any money to move it, and it might cost very marginal amounts of money to make the outside look nicer.”
“Something as simple as that would allow us to work within the community’s culture and would honour their culture and still get the job done as an engineer.”
Looking at the triple bottom line
As the country gradually embraced truth and reconciliation, Fonstad sorted through his own professional experience and arrived on an opportunity for a project.
He knew a First Nation that had built the first stage of a subdivision. A design for a second stage was underway, but he had some students do their own. They could consult the technical staff, but there was not sufficient time to consult the community.
Their task was to create two designs – one being a typical urban design. Fonstad explains the second.
“(Let’s) see if we can’t lay the houses out in a different manner that’s based on social and cultural priorities that are at the same level as environmental and financial,” said Fonstad.
“Let’s do a true triple bottom line.”
The differences between the designs were easy to spot. For example, each home was placed so that together they formed an arc. Exiting the front of the homes lead to one another while vehicles were driven up to the back of the homes. The water and sewer lines weren’t placed under streets to reach the homes. Instead, they ran through fields and pathways.
“The infrastructure (of the second design) cost exactly the same as the other one, so the cost was absolutely no different but the feel and the look of that community was very, very different,” said Fonstad.
“You could actually see the cultural difference. You could see it was a much healthier community, we thought, and we got some really good reviews from the tribal council and the band staff that we were working with.”
Changing funding requirements
Fonstad approached what was then Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC) but is now Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) about the results of the project.
“I asked, ‘How can we get this to change?’ Because every planner that I talked to and every engineer I talked to had been trying to push the envelope on these rules for 30 years now,” said Fonstad.
“They work with the bands to try to get what the communities want, but they’re restricted because the finances have these strings attached.
“They said, ‘Really, until somebody can document this — because we’ve got 30 years of anecdotal evidence — and publish it so ISC is almost forced to do this.’
“All we’re trying to do is maybe help facilitate that by putting some of this in the published literature so that the policymakers have to pay attention to it, because they don’t tend to pay attention to anecdotal information,” said Fonstad.
Documenting the difference
A new research project was developed and Dr. Kerry McPhedran, MSc (Biol), PhD, P.Eng., was brought on board in 2015 to lead the team with his research capabilities. McPhedran is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Geological, and Environmental Engineering at the U of S and a Centennial Enhancement Chair in Water Security for Indigenous Communities.
Fonstad explains this is a community co-design project that is about putting people and their quality of life in the community at the centre of the design rather than designing to maximize the dollars per front foot of development or to efficiently move vehicles through a community.
It is the Muskoday First Nation and Muskeg Lake Cree Nation Community Co-Design project, which is funded through contracts with each First Nation. Muskoday First Nation is about 26 kilometres southeast of Prince Albert while Muskeg Lake Cree Nation is about 93 km southwest of that city. Both are planning subdivisions.
McPhedran explains how, through their research, people will be front and centre.
“So rather than doing engineering first, we’re doing this project thinking of the social side and the health side first and then bringing in engineering after that,” said McPhedran.
“(We’re) seeing, if we have social issues and health issues that are arising from the engineering later, are we’re paying for it later?” said McPhedran.
The project has three objectives. The first is learning how to engage a community in the design process.
“This is typically not a strength of most engineers,” said Fonstad.
“How do you engage an Indigenous community to allow them to envision what their community is going to look like 10, 20, 30 years down the road? How do we turn qualitative data in to quantitative data that can be applied to a design?
“That’s a very specialized field, and it’s not something that engineers normally would do but how do you come up with a best practices kind of a document that would say, ‘If you’re going to engage Indigenous communities, here’s something that’s written and supported by Indigenous communities and facilitated by university professors.’”
He sees it as developing management practices that “empower Indigenous communities to take ownership of their vision and then empower engineers and planners to help them attain that vision.”
The second objective is to learn how to balance community desires and needs with developing cost-effective solutions. This relates to the initial capital costs and finding ways to adapt the design so it doesn’t result in a proposal that is potentially cost prohibitive.
Finally, the third objective is tracing social and health costs and possible associations with engineering designs. This would relate to the operation and maintenance of the infrastructure once built, but also any community, family or health issues that were influenced by the initial design.
“It’s talking about the triple bottom line: social, economic and environmental,” said McPhedran.
“We know that economic side of things. It’s well-known when we put in a sewer pipe or when we open a water treatment plant, we know how much it is. That’s a well-known, easy thing.
“On the environmental side, we’re getting better at, I think,” said McPhedran, pointing out how a dollar value can be assigned to a tree, as an example.
“On the social side, we don’t know the costs of mental health (for example). It’s really hard for us to know, so that’s why we want that social side to be first.”
Quantifying health and social issues
That is why they are collaborating with the U of S’s Dr. Wanda Martin, RN, BScN, PhD., and Dr. Lori Bradford, PhD., for their expertise in nursing and social science, respectively. Martin is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing. Bradford, an Assistant Professor with the College of Engineering and School of Environment and Sustainability, has been nominated for a Canada Research Chair related to incorporation of social and cultural goals in engineering design.
“The way we envisioned it was to have someone that could bring social and cultural values into the engineering design process,” said Fonstad.
“What you really want is somebody that can take qualitative things and make them quantitative so engineers can use them.”
Determining how and what to quantify is underway. Sometimes, it could be establishing a dollar figure. For example, what are all the factors and incremental costs associated with a boil-water advisory? How much is it for accessing, transporting and storing water for each home? What is the financial cost of the mental strain for those carefully monitoring how their family uses the available water? How much are the expenses associated with becoming sick from ingesting or bathing in unsafe water?
Other times, quantifying could involve using numbers to rank or compare. That may come from information gathered during targeted interviews or questionnaires with many community members that can help identify what should be quantified. What they share can corroborate a story that identifies what is important to the community and the associated health and social aspects.
“We always come back to using numbers,” said McPhedran.
The qualitative information is collected, in large part, due to work by community researchers, who are part of this research team.
Local people from the Muskoday and Muskeg Lake area who have a very good understanding of the community and its interests fill these roles. They, for example, facilitate interviews with community members. These individuals are well-connected so they are trusted and can ensure more people’s perspectives are heard and incorporated into the research.
“That way, whatever happens, we’re not coming in and doing research and leaving. They will actually get something tangible — somebody that’s trained in this area,” said McPhedran.
Sharing engineering experience
There are also three PhD students on the team, including Tim Vogel, Engineer-in-Training. Fonstad sees this project not just benefiting these students’ education, but those who will train to become engineers at the U of S in the future.
He and McPhedran hope some retired APEGS members who worked with First Nations will share details about their lived experiences during their careers with these students.
This will help the students compare what occurs today to events and approaches of the past, providing context that may identify red flags and knowledge gaps in their research.
“Different consulting engineers already have that knowledge but they keep it internally because that’s their business, but we’re hoping they make it a bigger picture because there’s more than enough work for everybody,” said McPhedran.
Fonstad recognizes there are engineers right now working with First Nations that share his perspective on the infrastructure funding for these communities.
His intention for this project is to provide the literature necessary to convince the federal government to change infrastructure funding requirements to better support the traditions, interests and needs that First Nations communities clearly express.
He also hopes it inspires non-Indigenous people to conceive of inclusivity slightly differently. There is opportunity in considering how other cultures understand and embrace living together rather than focusing on convincing others to accept the dominant culture.
For example, many cultures are accustomed to multiple generations of a family sharing a home. Many immigrated to Canada desiring to replicate that family life in their new home. Helping people in all communities identify and articulate their interests and values so their community looks and functions in ways that are supportive of that is a broader implication of this research.