[ep 107] James Harry on Coast Salish Design, Cultural Inheritance & the Future of Architecture

This episode is part of a live conversation series between The Craft and IDS Vancouver, recorded at this year’s show on the Vicostone Main Stage.

On September 26, The Craft sat down with James Nexw’Kalus-Xwalacktun Harry, a contemporary Coast Salish artist whose practice is challenging how Indigenous design intersects with art, architecture, and the built environment.

The son of Xwalacktun, a master carver and keeper of Coast Salish cultural knowledge, James grew up immersed in a tradition he continues to carry forward through monumental sculpture, digital fabrication, public art, and architecture.

The conversation begins with his childhood and the meaning of cultural inheritance, before opening into a larger exploration of identity, tradition, and possibility. For James, Coast Salish design isn’t a historical style to be preserved or applied as decoration: it’s a living, generative system with the potential to reshape how people think about space, structure, and the environments they inhabit.

From the crescent, circle, and trigon to the symbolism of portals, James shares the thinking behind these forms and their potential to move beyond the gallery and into the structures of everyday life. His work also challenges the Western tendency to separate art, architecture, objects, and space into distinct disciplines, opening up new possibilities for how Indigenous knowledge might inform contemporary design.

This conversation is about cultural continuity, the future of architecture, and the power of ancestral knowledge to shape what comes next.

Please enjoy this thoughtful dialogue and Q&A with the incredible artist and futurist, James Harry.

Sound engineering: @alikadong

Photography: @mrjeremywong

Marketing support: @maizmcknight

[TIMESTAMPS]

25:50 - Growing up