Natural infrastructure for Caldwell First Nation

When envisioning the development of its community, CFN elected officials, administration, and citizens realized the opportunity to build a community that encompassed ideas of land stewardship, sustainability, and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to become a gold standard in sustainable development. In 2021, CFN received notification that it has received $9.8million to build 28 homes. CFN decided to embody the aforementioned ideals and has partnered with Quantum Passivhaus to build all of the homes on-Nation as passive homes as a commitment to sustainable and regenerative development. This commitment includes built and natural infrastructure that deliver climate change resilience; increased access to nature; improved environmental quality; enhanced biodiversity and habitat; climate change mitigation. Phase 1 of CFN's development include the civil design and development of the site from a farm field to a community, building 28 passive homes, building a biodiverse pond that serves the purpose of stormwater management, and the landscaping and streetscaping of Phase 1 of the community. This project supports phase 1 of the development and project activities include: Community consultation and engagement on natural infrastructure, signage, and traditional knowledge with youth, elders, and knowledge keepers, landscape design, flood prevention through ensuring the community is built to the 100-year flood level and building appropriate drainage and stormwater management on-site, ensure more energy efficiency to CFN's passive homes by planting trees that will provide appropriate shade cover to the Phase 1 homes, creating green space on-reserve while maintaining two sections of old growth forest, planting shade trees to increase the energy efficiency of CFN's passive homes, design elements such as signage in Anishinaabemowin and English that educate and inform about the biodiversity of the region, sustainable practices in the community, the community's commitment to land stewardship and artwork and built features made by Indigenous artists, create gardens and landscape details using native species and Indigenous medicines, create walkable spaces by reimagining the community design that decreases the dependence on vehicular traffic using permeable materials, building phase 1 of a biodiverse stormwater retention pond and stream/bioswale that becomes a key feature of the Nation's stormwater management plan but also can act as a habitat for local Species at Risk and migrating species (CFN is in the migratory bird path and has one of the largest populations of migrating birds in Canada)