Who gets to define the boundaries of a home? What forms of research, dialogue, and movement build relations to past and present homelands? How are futures made by remembering what was forcibly left behind?  

Join Sophia Francesco and Reanna McKay as they discuss the projects they have undertaken through the CCA’s 2025–2026 Indigenous-led Design Fellowship Program. From Francesco’s embodied, transnational inquiry into the lives, stories, and experiences of Tacuate-Mixtec homemaking, to McKay’s careful turn into her family’s resurgence from the Residential School system, they explore the broader questions their research opens for reclaiming culture and ceremony through contemporary architectural practice. The fellows discuss the intimate boundaries between life and research, memory, and the anticipation of change.

This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so registration is recommended. Admission to the museum is included with your registration.

Sophia Francesco is an Indigenous (Tacuate-Mixtec) Mexican-American organizer and designer currently based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her emerging design practice focuses on community engagement to empower the active participation of all beings in forming stronger systems of care in the built environment. While at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she was awarded the Undergraduate Architecture Thesis Award for her research entitled Land, Being, Belonging: the Power of Coexistence in the Ever-Changing World. She has worked with the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, the Navajo Nation Department of Community Development, and currently works as a Community Organizing and Outreach Program Associate with the Turtle Island Community Capital.

Reanna McKay is a Nihithaw artist, writer, wife, and mother from Barren Lands First Nation, and an Architect and Indigenous Design Co-Lead at Number Ten Architectural Group. She holds a Master of Architecture and Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba, where she co-founded the Indigenous Design & Planning Students Association. Throughout her academic and professional work, she has facilitated community engagement, produced land-based pedagogies, and amplified Indigenous voices.  Reanna is a strong advocate, serving on the boards of the UM Board of Governors, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and Indspire.

This event is generously supported by CCxA, KPMB, NORR, Lateral Office, Stantec, Drew Sinclair (SvN), and the CCA.