A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of City Planning, Department of City Planning, University of Manitoba Winnipeg by Jonathan Hildebrand, Copyright © 2012 Jonathan Hildebrand
See part 1 here.
Literature Review
Admin’s note: Several paragraphs were omitted for brevity at this point.
Although the above themes can be usefully discussed in reference to each other, presenting them in tandem raises certain risks. There is, for example, a danger in reproducing colonialist social structures through the use of Western-based spatial analyses to describe and interpret Indigenous processes, worldviews, and approaches to planning. This literature review will attempt to avoid such pitfalls, presenting these two separate themes and making linkages between them where appropriate. For example, those Indigenous planning approaches that are rooted in Indigenous values and those that critique Western planning’s colonialist roots, can both offer ways of thinking about space and social relations that encourage and foster social transformation through decolonization and Indigenous autonomy.
The Diversity of Approaches to Indigenous Planning
The question of what constitutes Indigenous planning can be answered in a number of ways, as it is a wide-ranging field. One way to define it is in terms of its professional significance. The term “Indigenous Planning” has an official designation; the American Planning Association (APA) does have an Indigenous Planning Division, the intent of which is to advocate, “community development based on land-tenure principles and informed by the distinctive worldviews of indigenous peoples” (American Planning Association, 2011). In its official incarnation, Indigenous planning began to emerge in the United States at a 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference, where Indigenous scholars usurped the meeting and proposed a new agenda to draft a declaration of purpose on “Indian policy,” which quietly ushered in the first “semblance of Indian selfdetermination” in the United States (Jojola, 2008, p. 41). Another key event occurred in 1992, when participating students at an MIT Community Fellows event pushed forward a postmodernist discussion on “grassroots activism and culture,” an action that resulted in “the formulation of a theory of action they named Indigenous planning” (Jojola, 2008, p. 42). Three years later, the Indigenous Planning Network – which was the forerunner to the current Indigenous Planning Division of the APA – was formed at the annual APA meeting. Although this illustrates the early beginnings of the Indigenous Planning movement in the United States, the realm of planning involved with Indigenous peoples and issues has expanded in multiple directions. I will review some of these directions, examining their key differences as well as some of their possible commonalities.
Hopefully, what will emerge is a clear image of the some of the major approaches, emphases, and schools of thought surrounding Indigenous planning. I identify three main approaches, or streams of analysis within Indigenous planning literature. First, there are those writers, researchers, and practitioners who seem to view planning ultimately as a rational and impartial discipline able to arrive objectively at solutions to various problems. This stream is of course more nuanced than such a description implies – for example these authors are more critical, analytical, and selfaware than it may seem from such a brief depiction. These approaches to Indigenous planning have emerged as Western planning theory and practice has begun recognizing the need to modify its modernist leanings, and work with Indigenous groups in more appropriate and sensitive ways. Yet there remains a rationalist thrust to these approaches that often fails to adequately interrogate the planning discipline’s relationship with Indigenous people.
The second theme relates more closely to Indigenous planning proper as briefly outlined above. With Jojola as a key proponent, this school of thought emphasizes the importance of starting first and foremost with Indigenous values, worldviews, and traditions when engaging in Indigenous planning work. This approach could be understood literally as ‘Indigenous planning:’ planning that is undertaken by Indigenous people and that is informed by Indigenous values. However, there are also writers in this vein who point to ways in which Indigenous people and values can be misunderstood or
misrepresented. Arguments in favour of Indigenous self-determination and interests are also part of this stream of Indigenous planning theory and practice.
Finally, other authors have adopted a postcolonial approach to planning work and research, unmasking the ways in which planning itself is and has been imbued with colonialist impulses, and persists in reproducing discourses, relationships, and spatial configurations that continue to marginalize and stigmatize Indigenous groups. This stance offers a challenge to those more rationalist writers mentioned above, and perhaps also in some ways to the ‘Indigeneity-as-central’ scholars. It is tempting to view these three streams of thought as a linear progression from least to most critical of planning as it relates to Indigenous peoples. In some ways this is correct, particularly in the way postcolonial writers present challenges to the planning field. However, these three thematic divisions also relate to one another in certain ways, are influenced by each other, and occasionally overlap. While the distinctions between them are nuanced, the distinctions do remain, making it possible to delineate and discuss them in this manner.
Positivist Indigenous Planning
Allmendinger (2002) has described rationalism as “the apex of positivist planning theory.” It claims to “underpin planning with ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ methods that can be applied to all aspects of planning practice,” presenting a “simple and highly structured view of the world and how to act in the face of inherent complexity” (pp. 42, 66). Indigenous planning, in its concern for marginalized populations and social justice, has come a long way from these earlier approaches, but there are ways in which it has also retained some of this positivist, rationalist thinking.
Boothroyd’s (1986) discussion of the “band planning” courses provided by the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) School of Community and Regional Planning represents an example of such thinking, particularly in his discussion of systematic planning and how it can be adopted by Aboriginal bands in Canada. As Boothroyd states, systematic planning, a rationalist approach, first identifies the goal one wishes to achieve, analyzes the forces hindering or aiding achievement of the goal, identifies alternative solutions and their possible effectiveness, and finally, continuously evaluates the selected alternative once it has been implemented (p. 16). He does acknowledge Aboriginal methods of planning by stating that, “Planning is not new to Native North American communities. It has always occurred in the course of organizing fishing expeditions, hunts, feasts, and villages” (p. 14). However, he also states that while traditional planning methods are effective and necessary in some situations, Native leaders are increasingly interested in supplementing these methods, and that systematic planning is a method by which a community can “ward off threats and benefit from its social and natural environment” (p. 14). In arguing for the adoption of systematic planning methods by Aboriginal groups he posits that:
To become self-reliant by successfully taking on…basic and widespread responsibilities for managing one’s future, requires today not only abilities to manage internal complex organizations, economies and resources – abilities which Native communities have always possessed – but also the ability to manage complex interactions with an ever-changing outside world. The management of complexity is what systematic planning is all about (p. 14).
Boothroyd here does give some credit to the efficacy of traditional planning methods and their ability to handle certain types of complexity, but by characterizing systematic planning as capable of handling complexity, he seems to leave some room for the implication that, if systematic planning is “all about” the ability to handle complexity, then traditional methods are somehow not.
His analysis of the band planning courses provided by UBC highlights the fact that the Aboriginal students who took the courses viewed them very favourably, and that “Native leaders recognize that they can benefit from reflection on their planning practice and can learn from others’ ideas and experiences” (p. 15). As later work has shown though, and as will be demonstrated further along here, the fact that there is no mention made in this analysis of how conventional planning practices could learn from Indigenous methods, or should undergo its own process of self-examination, is problematic.
The application of conventional Western planning models to Indigenous contexts also characterizes Ndubisi’s (1991) study of the Ojibway community of New Credit and the ways in which the planning paradigm of social learning could be applied there. In making this argument, he seems to make a subtle differentiation between “culture” and “planning.” On one hand, “culture” deals with “the relationship between values, including beliefs and attitudes; the process of social interactions; and material artifacts such as skills and technology. As an information system culture provides a set of rules for guiding behavior” (p. 53). On the other hand, he situates planning as a “societal guidance activity normative in function and centrally concerned with making decisions and informing actions in ways that are socially rational” (p. 53). He does qualify this by noting how Western planning has been taken to task for its ethnocentricity, but nevertheless states that, “In a cross-cultural planning context, the planner…acts as a mediator of group-based processes” (p. 64). He thereby puts the planner in the position of rational objective mediator, and aligns himself with rational planning methodology.
However, he also emphasizes the need to recognize how values play a role within planning processes, and how “conventional planning concepts need to be reexamined in light of the value systems of the relevant client groups” (p. 64). Ndubisi therefore begins to depart somewhat from earlier rationalist tendencies within planning, although not to the extent of some Indigenous planning proponents and practitioners.
In more recent scholarship, Lane and Hibbard have been some of the more prominent writers and researchers on Indigenous planning, particularly in research on the United States and Australia. Lane (2002), much like Boothroyd and Ndubisi, argues the merits of Western planning in Indigenous contexts, and does so by proposing a hybrid planning approach that “integrates the positive features” of three models: “centralized institutional regulatory, community-based planning, and reticulist (facilitated process) approaches.” A hybridized model of this nature, he argues, enables collaborative planning between Indigenous groups and state governments, and “overcomes the deficiencies of community-based approaches by retaining an active, albeit limited, role for state agencies” (p. 827). Notable here is the fact that although there is concern for the ability of Indigenous groups to manage traditional lands, none of the planning approaches proposed originate from Indigenous contexts.
In a co-authored article, Lane and Hibbard (2004) invoke the image of the planner as objective mediator, in their discussion of planning’s contribution to resolving cross cultural conflicts over natural resources. They argue that planning is an “indispensable conceptual and operational lens” through which issues of Indigenous sovereignty can be understood (pp. 97-98). The positivist basis of their assertion is evident in their argument for planning’s relevance on the basis of its concern with “mediating between diverse claimants,” its “problem-solving focus,” and particularly its “emancipatory role…its potential to transform the structural dimensions of oppression” (Lane & Hibbard 2005, p.172). Although they point out planning’s concern for issues of social justice and equity, the view of planning as the objective mediator and rational problem-solver harkens back to old conceptualizations of the supposedly progressive and enlightened planner bringing ‘civilization’ to Indigenous people. Furthermore, the claim of planning’s ability to reform oppressive social structures is very limited if it does not also first recognize how planning itself has historically helped maintain those structures, and then work towards changing this (Porter, 2010). In other words, Lane and Hibbard’s argument fails to address planning’s need for cultural self-examination, something to which postcolonial critics are well attuned.
Although the positivist approaches to Indigenous planning do rely on rationalist assumptions that have been fiercely interrogated, this does not mean that they ignore the ways in which Indigenous groups have been marginalized and the role that cultural, social, and governmental institutions have played in this marginalization. Ndubisi (1991) for example recognizes that planning has had many shortcomings. In the Canadian context, he states that planning undertaken by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada has been inept in effectively capturing Indigenous culture values and worldviews in the development of community plans (p. 53). He also begins to emphasize the importance of Aboriginal worldviews when he states that, Systematic planning is especially likely to be acceptable to Native communities when it is seen to complement rather than replace the traditional planning modes relating to participation, consultation, information sharing and decision making, and when substantive insights and knowledge of the elders are respected (p. 17).
However in this statement, systematic planning remains something that can be applied in traditional contexts. Hibbard and Lane as well have made similar qualifications to their arguments, remarking that, “planners tend to overlook, ignore, or misinterpret indigenous perspectives” (Lane, 2002, p. 829), and that planning has often “served indigenous peoples poorly” (Hibbard & Lane, 2005, p. 174). What these examples show is that while these planners are rightfully concerned for justice and autonomy for Indigenous people, their understandings of planning remain tied to colonialist mindsets and must further decolonize. They are therefore limited in their ability to help foster greater Indigenous autonomy.
The Centrality of Indigenous Worldviews
While planning has often started with certain culturally-rooted ideas and related them out of context in various ways to Indigenous issues and contexts, there are other Indigenous planners who emphasize the need to start with Indigenous values and worldviews in planning practice and research. Jojola’s work is key to [this] school of thought. He has described Indigenous planning as an approach to community planning as well as an ideological movement. According to him,
“What distinguishes indigenous planning from mainstream practice is its reformulation of planning approaches in a manner that incorporates ‘traditional’ knowledge and cultural identity”.
(2008, p. 42)
Land is key in this conceptualization of Indigenous planning, and “Unlike Western approaches, indigenous planning approaches were formulated on practices associated with land tenure as well as the collective rights associated with inheritance” (2008, p. 42). An Indigenous worldview, he points out, understands land through long patterns of communal ownership and inheritance. This view of land embodies “values that are essential for attaining a well-balanced and symmetrical interrelationship between humankind and the natural ecosystem that it occupies” (2008, p. 43).
Not only does Jojola identify a need to reformulate planning practices along Indigenous lines, he also points out the ways in which Indigenous groups have always planned, even before contact with Europeans. In discussing the history of the All Indian Pueblo Council, he argues that planning “was not a concept imposed on indigenous peoples by Euro-Americans. Indigenous communities existed in myriad highly coordinated and planned towns and villages” (1998, p. 101). The Pueblo societies’ traditional beliefs in their origin from the earth, and this spiritual connection to the land had an effect on how they ordered and organized their communities – certain architectural forms, for example, “symbolically replicated the cyclical time dimensions of this cosmological relationship [with the earth] by its circular shape” (1998, p. 109). The traditional model of consensus-building, in addition to clanships, determined land use patterns and land tenure for the Pueblo societies (1998, pp. 109-110). Jojola (2000) presents the Oneida Tribal Nation of Wisconsin as case of how Indigenous values can themselves form a planning base for community development. The Nation’s construction of the “Turtle School” serves as an example of this. Crucial to the school’s construction was how “the ‘vision’ of a school was informed by the worldview of the Oneida people” (p. 13). The school’s design, which was roughly in the shape of a turtle, “was turned into a mnemonic device for sharing and interpreting the nuances of Oneida’s worldview” (p. 11). These cases studies begin to reveal the depth of Indigenous worldviews beyond the sphere of planning and conceptualizations of land. In terms of planning specifically, they also help emphasize the importance of Indigenous culture in planning, and the reality that Indigenous communities have never been without their own forms of planning.
Corntassel (2008) has employed a similar argument, pointing to Indigenous actions of self-determination that are based in traditional ways of thinking. He examines discourses of environmental sustainability, stating that, unlike Western discourses on this concept, sustainability for Indigenous people is “intrinsically linked to the transmission of traditional knowledge and cultural practices to future generations.” Without the ability and opportunity for Indigenous communities to “continually renew their relationships with the natural world,” their “languages, traditional teachings, family structures, and livelihoods of that community are all jeopardized” (pp. 107-108, 118). The two starkly different discourses of individuality and communality are apparent here. Corntassel proposes a concept of “sustainable self-determination” as a way toward the “restoration of indigenous livelihoods and for future political mobilization” (p. 105). He offers examples of this concept in practice, specifically the Native Federation of Madre de Dios in Peru. Three main nations within this group sustain their communities through fishing on rivers in the region, and have also established sentry posts along two rivers “to monitor river traffic and report illegal loggers to the Peruvian authorities.” The second example is the Anishinaabe White Earth Land Recovery project, one of the major components of which is a “good food program” providing traditional foods to diabetic elderly Anishinaabes (p. 120).
Other writers have also examined how Indigenous groups have used their Indigeneity (in terms of identities, cultures, and worldviews) in combination with contemporary planning approaches in order to achieve development that is culturally relevant and politically autonomous. The Zia Pueblo and Pueblo de Cochiti tribes of New Mexico, for example, have undertaken successful development initiatives through “traditional governance institutions and tribal members who can strategically engage both indigenous knowledge and outside expertise to plan development that supports cultural
integrity” (Pinel, 2007, p. 9). As Beneria-Surkin (2004) argues, alternatives need to be articulated that build up “new capabilities in the form of human capital, technical knowledge etc.,” while maintaining “indigenous…knowledge and livelihood strategies” and ensuring that such practices are “defined by indigenous peoples themselves” (p. 115). Thus with Indigenous worldviews and self-determination at the centre, there are opportunities to “repatriate traditional planning approaches as well as adapt those mainstream practices that make [Indigenous communities] more culturally resilient” (Jojola, 2008, p. 45).
Other case studies in Indigenous-led planning are provided by Gow (1997), who demonstrates how this type of planning places Indigenous culture at its centre in a way that counteracts the “centrality of planning” – that is, the view of ‘the plan’ as “an indication of ‘high seriousness,’” and as “proof that the future and ways to deal with it have been taken into consideration” (p. 244). This alludes to the basis of positivist planning, discussed earlier, which views planning as a sort of all-knowing entity with comprehensive problem-solving solutions. Gow’s case studies come from Colombia, where the Guambía and Nasa communities developed their own plans that while distinct from each other, also focused on key common themes. These included the recovery of traditional culture and the contributions it can make to the economic and social life of the community, as well as the importance of educating community youth through, in the case of one group, the construction of a high school as an “ethnocultural college” (pp. 257, 265). The above case studies, taken mostly from rural contexts, show the use and effectiveness of Indigenous values as planning tools.
In a more urban context, Silver, Hay, and Gorzen (2005) have researched Winnipeg’s inner city Spence neighbourhood and its Aboriginal population to understand its role in community development within that neighbourhood. Again, taking Indigenous values as a starting point for change and development, they find that traditional ways of life would have a positive effect on making the neighbourhood more inclusive, and could contribute to a fuller and richer kind of community development.
Through conducting interviews with Aboriginal people from the area, they discovered a that Aboriginal community members experienced a sense of separation from the wider community and were in some subtle ways not welcome, even in a neighbourhood with a strong community organization (p. 257). However, the interviewees also told the researchers “they want more opportunities to experience and practice their cultures, and want more opportunities for their children to learn their cultures” (p. 259). In light of this, after listening to the Aboriginal voices in the community, the authors concluded that, “The systematic effort by Aboriginal people in Spence to promote their cultures would have several positive results:” specifically the coming together of Aboriginal peoples would help build social capital, the celebration of cultures could offset some of the “deleterious” effects of past cultural denigrations, and also serve as a platform for “further community development initiatives” (p. 278). Again, in this case it is the traditional practices and values that form the basis of community development.
Finally, there are some scholars who have called for new ways of looking at planning with Indigenous groups, critiquing how Indigenous populations have often been misunderstood, and their values sometimes assumed or essentialized by non-Aboriginal planners and institutions. They still advocate for a focus on planning from the point of view of Indigenous values, but they argue that this should be done and thought of in new ways. In looking at co-planning efforts between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups in Winnipeg, Belanger and Walker (2009) argue that the co-production of plans between city officials and Aboriginal groups must be based on the “principle of selfdetermination,” and on the priorities of Aboriginal people, rather than on “short-sighted interpretation[s] of expediency and civic authority to act” (pp. 130, 120). Walker (2008) has also argued the importance of Aboriginal self-determination in urban contexts, pointing to urban reserves as potential opportunities for First Nations self-determination, not only in terms of economic development, but also socially and culturally (p. 32).
Unfortunately, as Lloyd, Van Nimwegen, and Boyd (2005) have asserted, planning processes often fail to take Indigenous perspectives into account, with governmental planning authorities often making no room for the “rights, aspirations and interests of Indigenous people,” and instead viewing Indigenous groups as merely one of many stakeholders within a planning process rather than self-determining nations with deep historical and cultural ties to the land and resources often at stake in planning and development schemes (pp. 411, 414). Li (2002) has pointed out similar failings in her study of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) in the uplands of Southeast Asia, arguing that, “the indigenous, forest-dependent, conservation-oriented communities envisaged as the subjects of CBNRM are more difficult to encounter in the uplands than [state] rhetoric would suggest” (p. 266). While some would benefit from provisions of CBNRM, others “would find themselves re-assigned to a marginal economic niche that corresponds poorly to the futures they imagine for themselves” (p. 266). In other words, the state and CBNRM institutions essentialize the Indigenous uplands population as quaint and pastoral, concerned with preserving austere, subsistence, and ‘traditional’ lifestyles. These characterizations of Indigenous groups render this an improper way of adequately addressing Indigenous concerns or understanding Indigenous points of view.
The approach of encouraging new ways of cross-cultural planning while maintaining the centrality of Indigenous worldviews and autonomy represents some useful possibilities for Indigenous planning as it moves forward. The challenge, though, is to avoid the dangers of giving lip service to Indigenous values and subsequently subsuming them within non-Indigenous social structures and planning approaches. The examples above from Walker, Belanger, and Li illustrate how this can occur all too easily. These types of shortcomings must be contextualized within the long history of exploitation, unequal power relations, and colonial domination, which planning is beginning to come to come to grips with and which is the subject of more recent postcolonial planning theory.
Postcolonial Challenges
While many of the positivist-inclined writers view the concept of planning somewhat unproblematically, and those who emphasize traditional worldviews as the starting point advocate a different (Indigenous) focus, there is a third stream of Indigenous planning theory that takes another, postcolonial, approach. This postcolonial perspective puts the focus on planning itself, arguing that planning practices must be interrogated for the ways in which they have been exploitative and colonialist in relation to Indigenous people (Sandercock, 2004a, p. 95). They are also interested in the ways colonialism continues to function in settlement space and in planning. Such critiques are hinted at peripherally by some of the more rationally inclined scholars, and have taken even more of a central role for those who advocate for the centrality of Indigenous values. However, those who employ postcolonial frameworks to Indigenous planning sharpen and advance the critique even more. In her discussion of radical planning in the context of the global South, for example, Miraftab (2009) states that, The persistence of Western planning ideals in our post/neocolonial, neoliberal times suppresses the subaltern conceptualization of cities and of planning. Insurgent planning scholarship aims at decolonizing the planning imagination by taking a fresh look at subaltern cities to understand them by their own rules of the game and values rather than by the planning perceptions and fantasies of the West (p. 45).
The key here is the recognition of the role played by widely accepted Western planning models in suppressing marginalized voices. Although that discussion focuses mostly on South Africa, the concept is also relevant to the present discussion. It also relates closely with Njoh’s (2010) argument that “modern planning is not the benign, objective and value-neutral tool for promoting the functioning of the built environment that it professes to be. Rather, it serves as a viable instrument for realizing the cultural imperialistic goals of Westerners” (p. 369). Such a statement is a sharp blow to planning, but Njoh is also not situating himself directly in the realm of Indigenous planning; he is more concerned with keeping the discussion broad, looking at marginalized populations more generally, and relating Indigenous populations to the processes.
Porter (2010) has undertaken perhaps the most sustained and concentrated critical analysis of the colonial nature of planning, demonstrating “how planning is a cultural practice, in the sense of being embedded within as well as creating its own meanings” (p. 2). To uncover the nature of this cultural embeddedness, “archeological work on planning itself” is necessary in order to facilitate the decolonization of planning (Porter, 2010, pp. 2-3). To those enamoured with planning’s social justice bent – and some of the rationally-inclined Indigenous Planners might be counted in this group – Porter offers a strong caution:
Recognizing, celebrating, understanding and developing good transactive and collaborative dialogues with sociocultural groups that are ‘other’ to planning is an essential and laudable aim. Yet those approaches consistently miss what I believe is the first and most theoretical and practical work to be done: to turn our analysis toward the culture of the practice of planning. Even when power relations are well theorized, and local histories and cultural nuances sensitively understood, to pretend that planning is the position from which the clamour of ‘difference’ in (post)colonial settings can be heard, translated and mediated is to forget that planning’s own genealogy is colonial and its work a fundamental
activity to the ongoing colonial settlement of territory. Forgetting to theorize planning’s own cultural position can render the ‘inclusion’ of Indigenous people in land management decisions a new form of colonial oppression (2010, pp. 11-12). In other words, even planning’s perceived social conscience cannot be truly mobilized as it is still imbued with colonialist structures than require further interrogation.
This is not only a historical or theoretical undertaking; in fact it has tangible ramifications for planning practices. In reflecting on her own fieldwork, Porter (2004) relates how her practices and methods were challenged and changed: “unlearning one’s privilege is a key element of doing cross-cultural research. It requires critical reflection on how we have come to value our own knowledge and practices and investigating why that knowledge is privileged” (p. 105). However, she takes the practical implications of her overall argument even further, stating that planners cannot just stop at reflection.
What is required in addition to this is “the ability to focus on moments within institutional rules and parameters where real and lasting change can be achieved” (p. 109). She uses real world examples to show how this might occur, particularly in planning processes involving states and Indigenous groups. In cases such as these, those working with Indigenous communities must acknowledge planning’s complicit role in “neo-colonial practices of exclusion, marginalization and the denial of basic rights to indigenous communities,” and also must be sensitive to possible divisions within Indigenous communities, many of which – in the cases she describes – are produced by past governmental decisions (p. 108).
Porter (2006) also lists three other important practice-related implications of her arguments and proposals. First of all, the common approach of including “stakeholders of different voices in a more deliberative, communicative process assumes that such inclusion is the key aspiration of Indigenous peoples.” The inclination of planners toward ‘inclusion’ can be problematic as it rests on “paternalistic notions of compassion and comparative disadvantage.” Additionally, the conceptualization of Indigenous people as one of many ‘stakeholders’ in a planning process “fails to appreciate their unique status as original owners of country that was wrested from them by the modern, colonial state” (p.389). Challenging more rationally inclined researchers and practitioners, she cautions planners to recognize “the relations of power that are always present and operating in planning situations” (2004, p. 108). By adopting such a stance, planners could perhaps wean themselves from the tendency to assume their profession’s objectivity and (imagined) ability to exist outside of social and power relations. It becomes clear in discussing the work of Porter and other postcolonial authors that there is still a long way to go for planners involved with Indigenous issues and contexts. While there are positives to be found in how planning functions, these arguments highlight the ways in which planning must undergo profound changes in order to better function in and alongside Indigenous groups.
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The three strains of Indigenous planning discussed here – positivist planning, the need to emphasize and start with Indigenous values, and the challenge to planning offered by postcolonial critiques – differ from each other in several ways. While positivist or rationalist thinkers are primarily concerned with conventional planning practices and how they can be applied in Indigenous contexts, the literature reviewed here shows that such
an approach needs to be altered. The literature surrounding the centrality of Indigenous worldviews brings to light the ways in which Indigenous groups have always engaged in their own forms of planning, and shows the usefulness of traditional worldviews in forming Indigenous planning practices. Such approaches are not only useful to Indigenous peoples for their own development and self-determination purposes, but also to non-Indigenous planners as they seek to understand how better to engage in planning work that can encourage Indigenous-led planning to flourish. Finally, the arguments of Porter and others will hopefully begin to take hold in the minds and practices of planners, producing more fruitful, just, and transformative incarnations of Indigenous planning. The significance of spatial considerations within planning (and in particular Indigenous planning) is addressed below.
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