Lecture: Magdalena Milosz on Residential Schools and Settler Architects

Once you have registered, you will be provided with a link to join the lecture via Zoom. This link will be emailed to you.

About the Speaker

Magdalena Miłosz is trained as an architect and currently completing a PhD in the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University. Her work examines architecture as a site of encounter between Indigenous peoples and the settler-colonial state, and is supported by SSHRC, McGill University, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Graham Foundation. Magda’s research and writing have appeared in RACAR, Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Scapegoat, The Site Magazine, Canadian Architect, and elsewhere. A settler scholar, she lives and works in the Haldimand Tract (Kitchener, ON), land promised to Six Nations, which includes six miles on each side of the Grand River.

Lecture Summary

While various historical figures have been referred to as “architects” of the Canadian residential school system—including the namesake of X University—this talk looks at the actual role of the profession in the genocidal history between the settler state and Indigenous peoples. Residential schools and other architectures mediated between a centralized bureaucracy and the communities and territories in which they were built, operating as a crucial component of settler colonialism.