They look a bit like four giant golf balls, but these domes are actually high-tech greenhouses — and they’re the home of a new project helping Indigenous entrepreneurs grow.
“We don’t want to create a space for Indigenous youth, we want Indigenous youth to come here and make it their second home, and learn about the land, how to grow produce from the land and how we can learn entrepreneurship through that process,” says Jonathon Araujo Redbird, a business leader from Saugeen First Nation.
The 24-foot domes, located beside U of T Scarborough’s tennis courts near the Highland Creek Valley, will stay at a humid 35 C year-round through their solar panels (which will also power the technology inside), irrigation systems, and geothermal tubes running underground and through the panels. The domes will be accessible for people using mobility devices such as wheelchairs and entirely self-sustaining when construction finishes in the coming months.
Inside, students and community members will add a hands-on element to what they learn in the virtual Indigenous Entrepreneurship Workshops, beginning this September. Taught and co-created by Redbird, whose company Redbird Circle Inc. specializes in entrepreneurship training based in Indigenous knowledges and values, this free 12-week program is designed around the medicine wheel: an Indigenous symbol of the balance between physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
The medicine wheel also inspired the themes for each interconnected dome — the first dome in the lineup will be dedicated to growing crops that support wellness, while the next will test ways to rejuvenate and improve soil quality without using chemicals.
Dome number three will be for teaching entrepreneurship through crops, and finding ways to turn fresh produce into high-yield sources of income for Indigenous people and communities. The final dome is for experimenting with agricultural technologies, starting with vertical farming equipment made by the U of T start-up Just Vertical, which constructs garden beds stacked on top of one another to maximize grow space.
Redbird grew up in the Gabriel Dumont housing complex in Scarborough, and has experienced how difficult it can be for Indigenous people to stay connected to the land on urban reserves. It’s also a challenge, he says, for Indigenous people to build intergenerational wealth when the Indian Act makes it extremely challenging to borrow money and impossible to trade land with people outside their communities.
“If Indigenous people want to build intergenerational wealth, the only way to do that is to leave our traditional lands and come to the cities,” he says. “And when we do come to the cities, the prices are very high to purchase a home.”
But that can start to change, he adds, by empowering Indigenous people through entrepreneurship — he uses a squash as an example, which could be sold itself for $1, or packaged with other dried goods in a mason jar and sold for $10 as squash soup.
Domes to bring in community across and beyond campus
Redbird Circle Inc., run by Redbird and co-founder Christina Tachtampa, first partnered with U of T Mississauga and its entrepreneurial incubator, ICUBE, in 2021 to offer the still-running Indigenous Entrepreneurship Program. Redbird and Tachtampa soon noticed that what their first cohort really wanted was to work together, on a larger venture that could help Indigenous people across Canada.
As that observation became a goal, Redbird’s workshops came to U of T Scarborough through The BRIDGE, one of the campus’ entrepreneurship accelerators. Teaming up with The BRIDGE and local non-profit The Indigenous Network, their idea took shape and they successfully applied for the Canada Community Revitalization Fund, a grant that advances community infrastructure projects.
Faculty, staff, librarians, students, alum and partners will continue supporting the program’s delivery through The BRIDGE, and will act as a conduit to other faculty and stakeholders within U of T Scarborough — they’re already in talks with academic departments interested in participating in different ways.
“We’ll be brokering those conversations and helping support the design of some of those engagements,” says Dave Fenton, assistant director of external relations in the Department of Management. “There are discussions with several programs about Indigenizing some of the current projects and curriculum, and learning about sustainability through Indigenous approaches to urban agriculture.”
While the upcoming workshop series, hosted by ICUBE and supported by The BRIDGE, is designed for Indigenous learners, it’s open to anyone interested in traditional Indigenous knowledge and entrepreneurship. Community members are also integral to the project and were present at an opening ceremony to give their thoughts on how they envision the domes’ layouts.
“This is a space that’s very much been created and will continue to be improved upon through that consultative approach and listening to community feedback,” says Arjuna Thaskaran, industry partnerships, innovation and work-integrated learning lead at The BRIDGE. “It’s about having the community take ownership of the space and drive how they want to shape it.”