Indigenous Planning and PlaceKnowing
Seminar Series on “Race, Ecology, and Design”
Indigenous Planning employs a 7 Generations model that uses culture and identity to inform community development. PlaceKnowing is necessary for understanding how communities construct their worldview to give and sustain meaning to the landscapes they inherit.
A conversation with Theodore (Ted) Jojola, PhD, Distinguished Professor and Regents’ Professor in the Community & Regional Planning Program, School of Architecture + Planning, University of New Mexico (UNM).
Moderated by Lee Davis, Co-Director, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); Designer-in-Residence & Curator, Ecological Design Collective.
Join us by creating an account at ecodesigncollective.org. Make sure to log in to your account on 11/4 and CLICK HERE to access the video link. Please bear with us as we pilot open-source alternatives to corporate communication technology! Write to collective@ecodesigncollective.org with any problems you encounter.
Theodore (Ted) Jojola, PhD, is currently a Distinguished Professor and Regents’ Professor in the Community & Regional Planning Program, School of Architecture + Planning, University of New Mexico (UNM), and Founder and Director of the Indigenous Design + Planning Institute (iD+Pi). iD+Pi works with tribal communities throughout the South West region as well as internationally by facilitating culturally informed approaches to community development. From 2008-2010, he was Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University where he was a member of the faculty of the School Geographic Sciences and Planning. He was Director of Native American Studies at UNM from 1980-1996, and established the interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Native Studies. He is actively involved in major research projects on Indigenous community development and PlaceKnowing. He is co-editor of two books — The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova entitled How It Is (U. of Arizona Press, 2007) and Reclaiming Indigenous Planning (McGill-Queens University Press, 2013). He has published numerous articles and chapters on topics relating to indigenous design & planning, stereotyping and economic development. He is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Isleta.
Co-hosted by the MICA Center for Social Design & the Ecological Design Collective.
About the MICA Center for Social Design
MICA's Center for Social Design is dedicated to demonstrating and promoting the value of design in advancing equity and social justice, and to inspiring and preparing the next generation of creative changemakers. www.micasocialdesign.com
About the Ecological Design Collective
A community for radical ecological imagination and collaborative practice www.ecodesigncollective.org
About the Seminar Series on “Race, Ecology, and Design”
Our ecological crisis stems from a profound disruption of natural systems around the world, economic structures that celebrate such destruction as progress, and social arrangements that inflict the consequences of this damage on the most marginal and vulnerable of populations. Design practices are often complicit in these predatory developments, reflecting the exclusionary nature of our capitalist present, and the harsh legacies of racism and colonialism that have long condoned the exploitation of societies and environments “elsewhere.”
What would it mean to imagine instead a design process grounded in attentive listening and responsiveness, in a willingness to engage vernacular knowledge, in the insights that arise from shared struggle, in an abiding commitment to social and environmental justice?