Organization:
Sustainable Development Corporation

Indigene’ (Latin = ‘self-generating’) + ‘Community’

(L = ‘com’ = together’ + ‘munus’ = ‘gift or service’)
Project Description:

We are buying, converting, building cohousing community here in Montreal for 20 to 50 dwellings or 50 to 150 people living in condominium owned dwellings with a common-area management corporation.

Indigenous peoples around the world primarily live or lived in clustered multihome dwelling arrangements such as Longhouse (apartment-like) & Pueblo (townhouse-like) buildings. We are all originally indigenous peoples from everywhere around the world. Since empire colonialization and typically detached isolated nuclear home dwellings and linear monetary capital economic accounting, this connected approach to individual, family, extended family and community living has been lost.

While all of the east and west coasts of North America were primarily Longhouse, in the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) Iroquois confederacy and here in the Kanien’keh (Land of the Flint) nation special affiliation was made to the Longhouse name. First Nation peoples saw our ‘exogenous’ (Latin = ‘other-generated’) isolation, our inability to kindly work or live with each other and realized that multihome and inclusive participatory living and economy is key for everyone to become indigenous to our time and place again. The Production Society / Guild based Economic Democracy inclusive progressive ownership specialized economies of indigenous peoples worldwide form a template for sustainable development in our time.”

900,000 people of Montreal’s island 1,800,000 population live presently in multihome buildings such as apartment and townhouses. There are some 10,000 multihome buildings. The average building holds 35 dwellings or some 100 people. We are already living in typical Longhouse and Pueblo proximity but without the connections and economies between us with which we might provide mutual-aid.

Community kitchen, dining-hall / restaurant in each building, and other specialized on site talents, goods, services and trades are being compiled in a web-based Human Resource Catalogue https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/home/membership and Human Resource accounting mediated Community Investment and Exchange System.

Our group presently has a critical number of those with home and savings equities (1,000,000$), rent/lease to own and trades/skills/talents goods and services to buy, convert or build a 20 – 50 dwelling multihome building in the range of 2 – 4 million dollars. We as well defer to indigenous development of polyculture orchards as a 3-dimensional food production both on top of, around the buildings and in the surrounding environment. Many United Nation, Permaculture, Forest Garden, Agroforestry and other practices and studies over the past 60 years point to a 100 fold or 10,000 % efficiency from 3-D over 2-D agricultural practices.

Organizing from the Treeroots, developing the ability of individuals to affiliate with critical mass indigenous ecological economies in proximity in multihome domestic economy with family, friends, extended family and community grouped into affinity as well as specialized in diverse areas of production provides a human framework for rebuilding ecological-economics. This is a fractal self-generating approach to reasserting biosphere production. We are each a voice of the earth speaking.

In order to heal the planet, humanity must heal relations among ourselves. Participatory Cohousing provides a tangible and feasible way for each person to “become the change we want to see in the world”. As humans join together in multihome living, employing methods from our indigenous heritage, then we animate the gifts of each person, greatly reduce our transportation requirements, become strong ‘corporate’ (‘body’) community entities, invest in biosphere polyculture orchard-based production and the earth is facilitated to become whole with humanity again.

We’re working with communities across Tiohtiake, the greater Montreal region, particularly LaSalle, St-Lazare, Rosemont, Verdun, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue and more.

We encourage Asset based community development economy ABCDE recognizing the needs and strengths of individuals and communities to contribute to their own and collective livelihood. Indigene Community www.indigenecommunity.info provides a detailed description for our cohousing and participatory economics approach and bylaws.

We work with indigenous methods of self-organisation. We work with a vision-quest process, whereby students would get to know us and find a niche in our work or invent their own, where they best contribute. We are presently involved in film with Radio-Canada, Rapides Blanc as a film company interested in both housing for members and a production space, other ecological businesses. Indigene Community website www.indigenecommunity.info and other media with which students can lend a helping hand and expertise.
Skills desired in Student Researcher:

English, French, Spanish, Mohawk etc Ability to work with personal reflection and inspiration as well as part of a team. We can involve students from every discipline as their vision can determine. Students may be interested as well in receiving shares/credits for their community services and hence a determining part of our Asset-Based-Community-Development-Economy ABCDE.
Project Duration:

Smaller (One Semester), 6-20 hours for 3 – 12 weeks
About the organization:

The Sustainable Development Corporation SDC (Indigene Community’s host) has been working with CURE over many years. In all we have had hundreds of students and citizens involved in our Eco-Montreal Tiohtiake Green Mapping, Tsi-Tetsionitiotiakon Sustainability Rooted in Heritage Mohawk Placename mapping, Polyculture Orchard, Relational Economy and other projects over 16 years.

www.indigenecommunity.info