December 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 32

SOCIAL EQUITY
Design, Place and Indigenous Ways:
Working with Local Communities
By Dr. PennElys Droz, David Jaber and Scott Moore y Medina

he role of design in enhancing communities - shaping our spaces and landscapes to meet an array of needs - cannot be understated. Challenges lie in making the benefits of design broadly accessible, even to those who can least afford
it. We, as the community of planners, architects, land managers, designers and
engineers, need to find ways to make our skills available to a wider range of communities.

Our work with rural, tribal and historically
under-resourced communities weaves in
these qualities, while leveraging the privileges we have as architects, planners and
engineers to create broadly shared benefits.

tive, healthy, strong, resilient and hopeful
places to live, play, pray and work. To do
this well requires several things:
* Cultivating real humility and understanding that we, as planners, engineers
and architects, do not know everything
or have all the answers
* Active listening and learning
* Respecting the inherent knowledge of
different worldviews
* Understanding who is not yet at the
table and inviting them into the circle
* Carving out valuable spaces for meaningful exchanges of ideas and knowledge to occur
At Blue Star Integrative Studio (BSI),
our practitioners strive to embody these
perspectives at a very fundamental level.

Remembering Indigenous Design
A good community engagement process
starts with striving to learn. For parkland
managers, Native American communities are particularly relevant to the learning process. Native nations are adjacent
to many parks and open spaces, and
those lands comprise many of the areas
where traditional harvesting - of foods,
medicines, basketry materials and other
crafts materials - takes place.
In the Lakota language, the word for
" economy " and " environment " is the
same word, symbolizing the deep connection between the continuation of
life and the giver and sustainer of life
- nature herself. What does this tell us
about our own views of economy and
the natural world? In most indigenous
languages, there are no words for " sustainable " or " regenerative, " but there are
words for " living life " and " respecting all
of creation. " How connected are we to
the life-giving systems that sustain us if
we must make use of nouns describing the
type of world in which we hope to live,
instead of how we are actually living?
If language itself doesn't always support
our efforts, the communities we serve can
help. As one Lakota tribal elder once reminded a team of architects and planners
at a community meeting where the topic
was sustainable design: " You are funny
with these ideas. We had self-sufficient,
interconnected communities for thousands
of years, and it worked. It has only been

Blue Star Integrative Studio

Perhaps one of the biggest favors that
architects, engineers and planners can do
for themselves, and for the communities
with which they work, is to take a step
back and understand the history of these
places, including where community healing must occur. There are those whom
history has favored through war, colonization and economic advantage, yet all
people need places to live and work. After
many years of wealth transfer and in the
face of an ever-shrinking class of clientele
able to afford enlisting the skills of professional designers, etc., these fields are
waking up, groggy-eyed, to a new reality.
Our intent - and, we would hope, the
intent of the vast bulk of the design community - is to create adaptable, innova-

Many generations of the Osage Nation gather together to shape the future of their community.
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December 2016 - Parks & Recreation

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