The Architecture of Backpacking
By Wanda Dalla Costa
The Taj Mahal at sunrise.
I was 14 when I overheard two workers at the local hardware store talking about their upcoming trip to Australia. They went through all the details, including what type of backpacks they planned to purchase, their modes of ground transportation and the destinations they wanted to see. I was inspired.
Eight years later, I headed to Australia, venturing off solo, full of excitement and fear. When I landed at the airport in Cairns, I was alone and scared, tears welling up in my eyes. Unable to leave the airport, I recall a lady who offered me a cup of coffee. I drank it, smiling to myself at the kindness of this stranger, and the timing. Thanks to this minimal gesture, I set off to begin my adventure.
This first trip was scheduled to last six months and would take me to the following five countries: Australia, New Zealand, Fiji Islands, Cook Islands and Hawaii. I was enamored with the changing scenery, the hostels, the backpacker scene and the challenge of maximizing every dollar so you could spend more time abroad. I ended up selling my return ticket, and traveled for nearly seven years to over 35 countries.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but this viewing of places and spaces brought architecture into my world.”
I walked through endless cities, visiting harbors, skyscrapers and cultural districts. I was especially interested in how local ways of living were supported by built forms: The food vendor stands on the street giving way to bustling evening hangouts, the micro businesses lining streets and the innovative forms of travel like the three-wheel tuk tuks, which transported millions of people each day. I didn’t know it at the time, but this viewing of places and spaces brought architecture into my world.
As a member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation, a First Nation in Canada, the countries of Australia and New Zealand took on special meaning for me. I learned about Indigenous people on the other side of the world, and I experienced a feeling of kinship and comfort. We were different, but we also had many similarities: The policies, the push to retain culture and lifeways, and the impacts of histories on our overall well-being as Indigenous people. Their powerful dot artwork, referencing land-based stories and filled with symbology, reminded me of home.
Conversations fueled my curiosity. On the backpacker trail, it was common for a group of travelers to gather at night, sharing stories of what they saw and where they were headed. We also would share stories from our home countries. This was 1991, before cell phones and internet cafes.
During these evenings of global conversation, many international backpackers expressed great interest in Native American culture. I found this both startling and confusing. For instance, I once met a backpacker from Thailand who wore Native American regalia on a daily basis. They knew about us?
What gradually became clear to me is that most people only knew glorified Indigenous fictions: the brave, the warriors, the ambassadors of Mother Earth. The side that these backpackers didn’t know were the treaties, the boarding/residential schools and the tragedies that continue to plague our reserves and reservations. With my undergraduate degree in Native Studies and Sociology freshly completed, I was able to share with them statistics on poverty, housing shortages and the lack of running water in many of these places. I felt inclined to tell a contemporary and complete story. Many were surprised. This told me that our contemporary realities needed to be shared.
I took many odd jobs to survive overseas: a data entry clerk in Sydney, selling jewelry on the streets of Tokyo, a bartender in Tel Aviv and pig farm hand in Rotorua, New Zealand. Then there was traditional jewelry and craft making. My mother would mail me beads, leather, feathers, sinew and bone. She collected supplies from our relatives back home on Saddle Lake Cree Nation. Every item had significance to me as they came from my community. My aunties would also send jewelry, artwork and carrying pouches, which I could sell to support my journey. From the raw materials my mother sent, I would craft earrings, necklaces and dreamcatchers, and sell these items at markets and on the streets. It was a small income, but one that allowed me to continue to see the world and share my culture. And creating these objects piqued my interest in design.
“I wasn’t immediately successful in architecture school. Modernism didn’t make sense after what I saw during my travels.”
My last stop on the journey was Israel. I lived in Tel Aviv with a Jewish family, and I was inspired by the unique form of kinship and community built over their long and tumultuous history. I found commonalities in the land struggles, the wars and even the spirituality. I also felt connected to their supportive community—a reoccurring theme across societies that endure hardships. The relentless determination and strength of all the people of Israel, on both sides of the conflict, was humbling. Standing at a lookout on the Mediterranean coastline, the ancient 15th Century port city of Jaffa behind me, filled with cobblestone streets and an abundance of stories that live within the walls, I decided that I would tell the story of my people through architecture.
I entered the Masters of Architecture program at the University of Calgary in 1997. My seven-year adventure gave me an uncommon attraction to non-dominant architecture. Pre-colonial architecture was more supportive of local ways of living, and provided a beautiful diversity and aesthetic variety to our cities. It wasn’t homogenous, or banal, but told a story of the people. I wasn’t immediately successful in architecture school. Modernism didn’t make sense after what I saw during my travels. The clean white boxes were incongruent with the wonderfully inventive and locally-engineered structures I had observed around the globe.
I aspired to the rounded mud huts in Nepalese hillside towns, the underground earthen homes in Coober Pedy, Australia, or the glistening, jeweled walls of the Taj Mahal in India. Anything but a white box. I argued with my professors for the first few years—architecture should be place-based and specific—but eventually realized I would have to conform in order to graduate.
I now teach at Arizona State University, where I am jointly appointed in architecture and construction. Experiencing the world early on through backpacking now drives my teaching style: My classes are nearly all applied learning. I lead a group of interdisciplinary students (typically American Indian Studies, architecture and construction) and we work together on architecture and construction projects for tribes, both urban and rural. Our classes are mixed, with about 25 percent Indigenous students.
We have worked on sustainable tribal homes, equestrian centers and justice centers. We also work inner city, with non-Indigenous organizations who aspire to make streets and buildings more inclusive. We are starting a cultural planning district study for a historic street in Phoenix. We have many international students in our class; they often identify with the term Indigenous. They too are inspired by how we employ planning, architecture and construction to retain culture: We call it placekeeping. In my applied teaching coursework, we spend considerable energy with locals and outside of the classroom—“doing work-in-place, with the people-of-place.”
Over the years, I have witnessed many modes of learning, none more valid than the next. All of the encounters with knowledge—whether emerging from the walls of temples, the stories of fellow travelers, in solitude or through talking with the people of a certain place—echo modes of Indigenous learning. When I teach, I try to make students aware of knowledge’s multiple epicenters. My classroom is often rearranged with students facing each other, aiming toward a space of shared dialogue, where we can each take on the role of teacher, learning from each other’s stories and experiences.
“My early travels taught me that celebrating culture and diversity can be contagious. We welcome lived experience in our classrooms.”
My early travels taught me that celebrating culture and diversity can be contagious. We welcome lived experience in our classrooms. We bring community members to co-teach with us; we make room for the diverse population of students to share their stories of home. We also spend a lot of time outside of the classroom, visiting reservations and sharing a meal with locals. Stories endure; they build understanding and empathy. They change trajectories.
Just as backpacking requires a certain adaptability and appreciation of the unknown, I’ve realized these are also critical skills for community-based work, which often involves a variety of variables that are beyond our control. Teaching students about responsiveness—or the value of the journey versus the most expedient path toward the finish line—is perhaps the most difficult lesson to teach. It’s one I learned in all those years on the road.
Wanda Dalla Costa is an Institute Professor at The Design School in the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts and an Associate Professor at the School of Construction in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, both at Arizona State University. She is a member of the Saddle Lake First Nation, the first Indigenous woman in Canada to become a licensed architect, and she has spent over 20 years working with Indigenous communities in North America.