In the spirit of reconciliation and on-going collaboration, the City of Toronto is leading the Indigenous Heritage Engagement Project (IHEP) to join with Indigenous people in an authentic learning process about Indigenous heritage in Toronto.
The IHEP was initiated to support the Toronto Heritage Survey – a systematic, city-wide survey to engage communities in proactively identifying properties with potential heritage value. An early commitment to the Toronto Heritage Survey was to develop a distinct engagement program for Indigenous communities to understand what they may value as heritage in Toronto.
The Indigenous Heritage Engagement Project is a community-directed endeavour; the project aims to create conditions that encourage the sharing of knowledge, stories, and ideas related to Indigenous heritage within the City of Toronto.
The aims of the Indigenous Heritage Engagement Project are to:
The Indigenous Heritage Engagement Project is working in collaboration with Indigenous peoples, Nations, and urban communities to gain insight into Indigenous cultural heritage in the City of Toronto. It’s first step, in 2019 and 2020, was to reach out to Indigenous community representatives and organizations and to organize two “Co-Development Dialogues”, led by Nbissing Consulting, to understand if the project might be welcomed by Indigenous people, and if so, how it could be developed collaboratively with them. Read the published reports from those two dialogues:
The guidance received through the dialogues fundamentally shaped a Request for Proposals process to hire an Indigenous Engagement specialist to lead the next phase of the project. Three Sisters Consulting was selected to work with the City to conduct outreach to First Nation, Inuit and Métis people to build support for the project, to develop an engagement strategy based on their interests and needs, and to deliver on that strategy. Several engagements occurred in the Fall of 2024, an online survey was developed and a plan to enter the next phase of engagements was developed.
That next phase began in the Fall of 2025, and is being lead by a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff in the City Planning Division. The Project was initiated and is funded by the City of Toronto’s Heritage Planning Unit, with support from Museums and Heritage Services.
The Heritage Planning Unit works within the City Planning Division to identify properties across the City that may have cultural heritage value or interest, to evaluate those properties against Provincial Criteria to determine whether they merit inclusion on the City’s Heritage Register, and to manage change on properties on the Heritage Register to make sure their heritage values are conserved. The Heritage Planning Unit also manages the City’s interests in archaeology.
The Museum and Heritage Services operates 10 historic sites – including Toronto’s iconic Fort York National Historic Site – that collectively tell the diverse stories of Toronto. Staff also manage, maintain, and lead the development and adaptive reuse and restoration of 100 City-owned major cultural and heritage buildings across 40 sites.
Developed from Co-Development Dialogues in 2020, the IHEP launched City-wide engagements in 2024. The first stage of engagement has included outreach to build connections to the project with First Nation, Métis, and Inuit people, the development of an engagement plan, including plans to form an Indigenous Focus Group, engagement meetings with First Nations and urban Indigenous people, and an online survey.
Next steps through 2025 to the end of 2026 will include focused interviews with Indigenous community members, the launch of the city-wide survey, the formation of an Indigenous Focus Group to inform a report and map of identified resources, and a community launch event.
Through the Indigenous Heritage Engagement Project (IHEP), the City of Toronto will join with Indigenous communities in an authentic learning process about Indigenous heritage in Toronto, whatever Indigenous communities may consider that to be. Heritage Planning staff wish to sit with Indigenous communities to listen, and to understand. At the end of the engagement period, the IHEP will share the record of that listening and understanding, as determined to be appropriate by Indigenous communities, so it may benefit as many people as possible.
The City of Toronto also intends to act on the knowledge and understanding gained through the IHEP. Outcomes may include:
The following case studies represent specific examples of some of the outcomes listed above.
Heritage Conservation Districts are a tool under the Ontario Heritage Act which can protect collections of properties which share common cultural heritage value.
The Baby Point neighbourhood is best known as the location of a 17th century Haudenosaunee village named Teiaiagon. Through engagement with Six Nations of the Grand River, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Huron-Wendat Nation (Nation Huronne-Wendat), and urban Indigenous communities, Heritage Planning has gained an understanding of the significance of this place to those Nations and communities.
The development of a Heritage Conservation District through the Ontario Heritage Act will result in policies and guidelines that will manage future change to protect and respect this site and its significant features.
The Ontario Heritage Act also allows for individual properties to be protected by designation. The provincial criteria include considerations for architectural design, how a property relates to its context, and for people or events that are important to a community that may have taken place on that property.
The properties at 508 and 510 Church Street are good examples of properties that were designated, in part, for the importance of the property to communities. Since 1994 the two houses have been the home of Crews, later Crews and Tangos, a storied venue for drag performances and queer gatherings. The properties are a cultural landmark within the Church and Wellesley Village and for Toronto’s broader 2SLGBTQAI+ community.
In April 2022, City staff determined that the properties meet Ontario Regulation 9/06 (the criteria prescribed for municipal designation under Part IV, Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act) on the basis of their design/physical, historical/associative, and contextual values. As such, the properties are significant built heritage resources.
Fort York National Historic Site, in collaboration with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, hosts an exhibition entitled Ntam bmaadziwin: Maadzing wenjisnok (First Nations: Surviving Injustice) as part of its installation How the War of 1812 Shaped Modern Canada. By working with the Mississaugas to apply an Indigenous truth-telling and storytelling lens to this exhibit, Fort York’s exhibition recognizes the contributions of Indigenous people before, during, and after the war.
Fort York also hosts the Na-Me-Res Annual Traditional Pow Wow and the Indigenous Arts Festival, an annual celebration of traditional and contemporary Indigenous music, dance, theatre, storytelling, film, crafts and food. Past performers have included Susan Aglukark, Tanya Tagaq, Morningstar River, Digging Roots, Mob Bounce, Red Spirit Singers, Supaman, Logan Staats, Metis Fiddler Quartet, Derek Miller, Red Sky Performance, and Kaha:wi Dance. It is the premier annual festival celebrating Indigenous arts and culture in the City of Toronto and helps to promote the vibrant and culturally rich Indigenous communities of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in and around Toronto.
In 2019 and 2020, two Co-Development Dialogues with Indigenous community representatives were led by Nbissing Consulting. The dialogues resulted in the following two reports providing guidance and advice on how the IHEP could be developed collaboratively with Indigenous people.