Endaayaan–Tkanónsote Residence

Opened in 2022, this student residence honours local Indigenous lands, communities, and histories. It is the first Indigenous-named building at Queen’s.

Located on Albert Street, the building name, Endaayaan–Tkanónsote, recognizes the region’s Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Indigenous communities, on whose traditional territory lands the university resides. Pronounced end-ah-yawn – t-gaw-noon-so-day, the new name means “home” in both Anishinaabemowin (Ojibway) and Kanyen’kéha (Mohawk). The name was developed over several months of consultation with Indigenous students, faculty, staff networks, and language specialists, and was then approved by the university’s Board of Trustees.

The residence’s outdoor courtyard includes an Indigenous gathering space designed by local Indigenous artist Tehanenia’kwè:tarons (David R. Maracle). The space is a circular area where people are meant to gather with a good mind and an open heart. Design elements incorporate the teachings of the Tékeni Teyohá:te Káhswentha (Two Row Wampum Belt), The Turtle—symbolizing Mother Earth, and other important Haudenosaunee ways of life.

If you were to look down from above, the surface of the space suggests the shell of an immense turtle emerging from the ground. “The turtle shell represents Mother Earth,” said Tehanenia’kwè:tarons, and whose Mohawk name means Cutter of Stone. “It reminds us to walk softly on her — on the back of the great turtle — during our time here. It is a place of grounding that allows good thoughts to be received as good medicine; Medicine we can share with others as we travel this living planet.”

Mother Earth is one of many important Indigenous symbols of knowing and being represented in the space. Visitors are encouraged to enter the area travelling counterclockwise around the shell. This is the traditional direction of movement in Haudenosaunee ceremonies and is connected to their story of the Skywoman, who moved in this way when planting the seeds of sacred medicines and foodstuffs on the turtle’s back — seeds that also grew into humankind.

Like turning back the hands of time, visitors moving around the space in this manner encounter large, stone benches encircling the shell. These represent the bones of ancient Indigenous ancestors and offer places for rest and contemplation.

Along the backs of each bench stretches the pattern of the Tékeni Teyohá:te Káhswentha, or Two Row Wampum belt. Comprised of two dark parallel lines on a white background, the Two Row Wampum dates to 1613 and marks the first agreement between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch settlers.

“The Two Row Wampum belt signals the groups’ promise to live in peace, while pursuing parallel but separate paths of culture, belief, and law,” said Maracle. “The dark lines represent a ship and a canoe floating side-by-side on the river of life, and the three white rows symbolize friendship, good minds, and peace. Together, the Tékeni Teyohá:te Kahswéntha is considered the basis of all treaties by the Haudenosaunee people.”

These concepts were realized with the help of Matt Fair, general manager of Research Casting Institute, whose team aided in design and fabrication of the space’s features.

The incorporation of an Indigenous gathering space into student residence building is a facet of the university’s wide-ranging effort to decolonize and Indigenize campus life.