ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the exhibition Unceded: Voices in the Land (2018) at the 16th Biennale di Venezia International Architecture Exhibition (2018) which showcased the work of eighteen Indigenous architects. McMaster expands on how the Plains Cree concept of miýikosiwin—a form of innate visual knowledge that orders the way in which the world is seen and experienced—informed the planning and curatorial choices behind the exhibition and engaged in dialogue with the Biennale’s theme of freespace. Miýikosiwin, McMaster argues, embodies freespace by pushing back against the spatializing logics of settler colonialism imposed onto Turtle Island. Through this process, the Turtle Island Pavilion in Venice becomes a symbolic gathering place for a multitude of Indigenous nations and their non-Indigenous allies within a pluriversal and multivocal curatorial strategy which expounded on four dominant themes: resilience, self-determination, colonization, and indigeneity.
