Indian Country: New Tribal Trust Lands and Indigenous Land Planning By Tracy Mullins, MS, AICP and Marcia Mullins, MNM
Indigenous planning as a process needs to strive for a balance across the five dimensions. In pursuit of these aims, Indigenous planning also needs to negotiate, discuss, debate, and mediate internally, the difficult terrain between tradition and modernity (Walker, Jojola, & Natcher, 2013). It can, therefore, be seen that Indigenous planning is heavily invested in consensus building and community participation approach. Foremost in this to this effort is to adopt a community development process that is informed and driven by the indigenous worldview. Worldviews are endowed with cultural ideals that integrate the past the present and future. Central to worldview are values associated with cultural identity, land tenure and stewardship that are the hallmark of tribal survival (Jojola, 2007). In order to protect and preserve those unique values and qualities, reservation development must occur in a sensitive manner and consider those values impressed upon the landscape by tribal ancestors. The teachings of tribal elders instructed tribal members to hold the land sacred, because of their belief that it is infused with life-giving spirit. The land provided food, shelter and spiritual comfort. That is why Indians ceremonially honour the land and their relationship to it (The Marshall Trilogy, 2009).
culture that support the tribe in a positive manner. In reservation planning, this may manifest itself as land development regulations which enforce a state or tribal building code for home construction but allows for cultural accessory buildings such as a chickee (Seminole Tribes), a birch bark sweat lodge (Chippewa Tribes) or teepee (Lakota Tribes) to be constructed outside the regulation of a modern building code. The success of Indigenous planning may lie in taking those cultural technologies from the dominant culture that build the tribe’s capacities and rejecting the technology that do not build tribal capacities. A useful technology for indigenous planning is the Geographic Information System (GIS) which is used to develop inventories of natural resources and cultural sites on tribal lands and assists tribes to make decisions for locating basic infrastructure like roads, water systems and electrical lines.
In the processes of Indigenous design, tribal values need to be translated into practical design elements even before the land is taken into trust through the BIA fee to trust application process. Tribal values assist and support the preservation of culturally significant resources and important landscape elements as well as building the unique identity of lands taken into tribal trust based upon the Tribe’s history and culture. Culture is the way of living developed and transmitted by a group of people to subsequent generations, including artifacts, beliefs, ethics, morals and other values, and underlying assumptions that allow people to make sense of selves and their environment (Smith, 2000). In order to protect and preserve the values and qualities of tribal culture, reservation development must occur in a sensitive manner embracing widely symbols and technologies of the historic tribe.
The two types of resources available for development on a reservation are renewable resources and extractive resources. Traditional culture recognizes that renewable resources are to be managed with the understanding that short-term consumption should not occur at the cost of long term sustained use. Resources are to be cared for in order to maintain the continued health of the ecosystem. Resources ranging from salmon to forests to herd animals are considered renewable resources for use today, tomorrow and by the seventh generation (Smith, 2000). Indigenous planning requires examining the relationships and connections between the Tribe and the dominant culture outside of the reservation. Development of tribal trust land should reflect a knowledge and understanding of the tribal culture and the in teractions with the dominant cultures. The development of tribal utilities such as sewage plants, water systems and power systems in a manner that exercises
At the same time, Indigenous planning adapts those tools and technologies from the dominant American
14