Paper short abstract:

Sacred space built inside a Canadian government office tower is examined. Ethnographic findings suggest new trends are emerging where individuals are claiming back the landscape. Small installations like the Algonquin lodge inside a workplace are re-establishing this connection.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses whether the Kumik lodge is a sacred space. Built inside a skyscraper that headquarters Canadian government aboriginal affairs administration overlooking the sacred waterfalls Akiko or Great Kettle of Boiling Water or Chaudière Falls, in the Ottawa River landscape. Indigenous cosmologies are complex but typically held all nature as animate. Today the dominant paradigm of scientism is evident in the surrounding office towers and hydro turbines. In researching the sacred, Eliade recommended the phenomenological approach. He theorized that sacred space could occur naturally or could be human-built. From ethnographic evidence, the Kumik is a human constructed space made sacred in the acknowledgment and repetition within it of ideas from Algonquin spirituality. New trends are emerging where individuals are claiming back the landscape and small installations like the Algonquin lodge inside a workplace seem to be re-establishing this connection.