Innovation Working Group:Designing Resilient Native

Communities

Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship &

Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative

Generous Sponsorship Provided by

Participating Organizations

Attendees included: Architects, Community Planners, Cultural Entrepreneurs, Housing Policy Leaders, Researchers, Housing Financiers

The Sustainable Native Communities Collaborative, an initiative of Enterprise Community Partners, supports culturally and environmentally sustainable affordable housing appropriate to American Indian communities nationwide. We help to build capacity through building relationships, focusing on core values specific to each place and rooted in the spirit, the community and the land.

GCCE has a three-fold mission:1. We support cultural entrepreneurs working to create and scale their enterprises.2. We advocate for the importance of cultural entrepreneurship and the value of a culture economy.3. We connect a global network of cultural entrepreneurs.

Cultural entrepreneurs drive global change. These entrepreneurs create economic value and promote cultural preservation and innovation. They enrich their communities and the world. They generate self-determination and self-reliance.

Innovation Working GroupNew Mexico EPSCoR funds Innovation Working Groups (IWGs) as a means to provide a venue for engaging New Mexico scientists and educators along with key nationally and internationally recognized experts to address the grand challenges that can transform science and education. A strategic final objective of IWGs is the submission of proposals that target NSF cross-cutting programs and/or the publication of synthesis papers.

Goals for Our IWG

1. Explore relevant concepts and the relationships among cultural, economic, and natural systems in Native communities designing toward resiliency.

2. Gain understanding of challenges and opportunities facing change agents and Native communities working to design and build resilient communities.

3. Identify knowledge and skill gaps related to designing and building resilient Native communities.

4. Create team of inter-disciplinary scholars and practitioners engaged along similar lines of research and program development.

5. Identify short-term opportunities for impact.

6. Set long-term goals and working teams.

Transdisciplinary Thinking

Planning and Design

Research Methodology

Policy and Governance

Comm

unication

and Comm

unity

Engagement

Natural Resource Systems

Biology

Entr

epre

neur

ship

Designing Resiliency

Natural Resource Systems

Communication and Community

Engagement

EntrepreneurshipPolicy and Governance

Planning and Design

Research Methodology

Our Group Process: A Navajo Way

Thinking

Planning

Living

Assuring

“Nothing is ever closed, there is always an opening, a way forward.”

Resiliency Defined

“Resiliency is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.”

Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems.

Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/

Resiliency in Native Communities:

Cultural Social

Natural Economic

“Resiliency is the capacity of Native communities’ cultural, social, economic, and natural resource systems to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.”

“If we haven’t placed culture and language at the centerpiece of our economic

development strategies we are contributing to our own demise. Cultural

entrepreneurship is a strategy that can help us find a middle ground.”

Regis Pecos, Cochiti Pueblo

For Indigenous Peoples,Cultural Resiliency is Paramount

Concepts Discussed• Housing can be leveraged as a tool for socio-economic

progress

• Socio-cognitive mechanisms re: space and place

• Crisis management and other tribal governance functions are in silos

• Racial/cultural conflicts and misunderstandings obstruct effective data collection and knowledge exchange

• Tribes can be leaders in creating resiliency through hosting inter-disciplinary gatherings and programs

• Businesses struggle to get established due to regulations

• “Global change” vs. “climate change”

ConceptsAssessing Resiliency• Relating thresholds to resiliency – along culture, economic lines

• Measure what is built and NOT built

• Communities should identify their desired “functions, structure, identity, and feedbacks”.

• Data collection should include community, can include aural histories

• Integrated measurement systems needed

• Specific measures can include• Policy and governance improvements

• Social: Educational outcomes tied to values, health,

• Cultural: language retention, family patterns,

• Economic: new business creation, locally owned business, import/export

• Natural Resources: managed for sustained health and function, used to support desired functions, structures, identity

ConceptsData Collection• We need improved models of knowledge collection,

management, dissemination• Can be community-driven, connecting youth and elders

with one anotehr and with science and research• Research questions should address issues the community

seeks to address – can be co-created with community• Grad students can serve as mentors• GIS data can be connected to oral histories• Maps are powerful communication tools • Data should be co-owned with community• Racial/cultural conflicts and misunderstandings obstruct

effective data collection and knowledge exchange

ConceptsCommunity Engagement

• Tribes have stories that tell of “global change” – it is something our elders already know

• Researchers can gain more insight through community engagement

• GIS + stories help people understand where they live

• Planning, design, and funding terminology can be off-putting for tribal leaders/planners

• Values of a given community speak to what benefits the community seeks from housing or planning

Resiliency Requires

Access to Broad and Deep Capital

• Human• Knowledge and skills, technologies

• Social• Trust = fluidity of resources

• Financial• For new ventures, infrastructure

ConceptsTribal Planning and Design• Complex histories and documentation of property ownership

complicates planning

• Funding streams are sometimes mis-matched from needs example: “preservation” funds cannot be used on individuals’ home but Pueblos are individually owned and need preservation

• Influx of wealthy property owners changes tax-structures, access to resources and makes land-based enterprises and subsistence difficult or too costly

• Sometimes tribes are facing issues unrelated to their own community – like drug trade in border towns.

• Not all tribal housing is for low income families

• Need to develop earned income enterprise functions in tribal housing authorities to make upkeep and other functions self-sufficient

Programs Cited as Examples

• Elder Pair Program

• Ohkay Owingeh’s community engagement processes

• Citizen Science programs

• Tribal Data Resource (TDR)

Challenges

• Change Agents

• Gaps in Knowledge, Skills, Tools

• Policies

Change Agents

1. People working in tribal planning, housing, economic development

2. Researchers, teachers

3. Entrepreneurs

4. Policy makers

Challenges: People Working in Tribal Planning, Housing, Economic Development

• Housing authority leaders and community planners are blamed or pushed aside

• Younger leaders, women leaders sometimes challenged to engage elders

• Lack effective community engagement tools

• Silos in governance structures

• Struggle to integrate traditional ways with modern lives

• Brain drain – our best and brightest leave

Challenges: Researchers

• Research and knowledge generation stems from “outside” experts

• Lack of data regarding cultural values

• Funding streams do not align with integrated projects (i.e. preservation funds for museums)

• Change leaders lack effective community engagement tools

• Lack of measurement variables and tools for measuring cultural/social/natural systems resiliency

Challenges: Entrepreneurs

• Entrepreneurs struggle to scale businesses beyond their remote community

• Entrepreneurs are not easily engaged through tribal procurement systems

• Struggle to integrate traditional ways with modern lives

Challenges: Policy Leaders

• Policies sometimes do not account for the struggle to integrate traditional ways with modern lives

• Funding and policies sometimes mis-aligned with lifeways

• Need increased cooperation among state-federal-tribal agencies

Knowledge Gaps

• Assessing resiliency• Characteristics of resilient communities

• Measurable variables re culture/social

• Measurement methodologies

• Indigenous-centered economic theory

• Traditional lifeways (resource use patterns, cultural norms, language) have been lost and/or are not documented

• Integrated understanding of economic + cultural + natural systems as one ecosystem

Knowledge Gaps• Methods for community-based data collection

• Best practices for Native community engagement in science

• How housing can be a catalyst for socio-cultural-economic prosperity

• Need to develop a housing impact measurement tool that measures social and cultural impacts of housing

Skill or Tool Gaps • Need to develop community processes that engage

along the lines of identifying “desirable functions” and then measure outcomes based on these functions

• Community capacity to create a shared vision

• Community capacity to analyze, synthesize, and apply data to problems

• Lack of information or poor information flows among designers, architects, planners, and community

• Tribal governance structure leads to silos

• Communities are challenged by RFP and app processes

Possible Opportunities and/or Solutions

Data Collection

• Make communities full partners • Reverse the paradigm of research so community can

engage and lead design and collection

• Place-based data collection

• Share ownership of data with community

• Engage K-12 students and youth

• Engage subsistence livelihoods people more

• Utilize existing data more

• Gather stories, use aural histories

• Link stories with quant data

Opportunities/Solutions...

• Pair elders with youth for aural histories

• Understand values of community to understand what data is meaningful

• Grad students can be powerful mentors

• Use imagining instead of visioning

• Develop a curriculum for indigenous planning

• Credit score improvement for families

• Business models for housing authorities

• Create a data repository for Native/tribal design, resiliency and housing projects

Opportunities/Solutions...

• Asset mapping as a tool for understanding what the tribe has and what the tribe wants to protect

• National Resource Center for Indigenous Resiliency(?) or Design(?)

• Create a book based on SNCC Case Studies

• Connect students to real-world projects

• Use building siting as an intervention

• Create integrated data warehouse

• Win the bid for the 2016 World Conservation

Knowledge Creation Opportunities• Indigenous economic thinking and behavior

• Indigenous lifeways that are resilient (understand and then create measurement tools)

• Business models that integrate economic, cultural and natural resource sustainability

• Community communication processes that support resiliency

• Community-based data collection methodology

• Policy that impedes or supports Native resiliency

• Social networking to alleviate poverty (integrated networks to increase access to resources)

Selected Short-term Opportunities for Impact• Create Advisory Group for SNCC (Jamie)

• Contribute to Treasury’s upcoming CDFI study (Alice and Rodger)

• Publicize Case Studies through conferences and professional/associations (SNCC Team)

• Thesis on policy issues in relation to indigenous resiliency (Bennie)

• Consider doing a “Mapping Workshop” in NM (Dr. Alessa)

• Create a dashboard for Enterprise to use for measuring resiliency in their projects (Matt)

• Host workshop in AK on Indigenous Resiliency through Cultural Entrepreneurship (Dr. Alessa, Alice, Bennie)

Selected Long-Term GoalsDevelop proposals and procure funding for:• Develop a curriculum for Indigenous planning, design, and cultural

entrepreneurship (Dr. Jojola, Dr. Kaneshiro, Dr. Alessa, Dr. Raheem, Dr. Loy)

• Create a ToolBox for community planners to use to engage communities in design and planning (Amanda, Dr. Jojola, Gepetta, Toma)

• Create a National Resource Center for Indigenous Resiliency (ALL)

• Author an Indigenous Economics textbook (Dr. Raheem)

• Build Ecosystem Services Training Series for tribal communities and leaders (Dr. Raheem and ALL)

• Collaborate on data sharing (Dr. Kaneshiro and ALL)

• Contribute to the methodology for community-based data collection (Dr. Loy and ALL)

• Partner on CNH NSF grant (Dr. Kaneshiro, Dr. Alessa, Dr. Loy, Dr. Raheem, Dr. Jojola)

• Partner on Entrepreneurship Institute for Community Designers (Dr. Jojola, Nathaniel Corum, Dr. Loy)

Proposed Next Steps• Bi-monthly team calls

(facilitated by Alice)

• Assign team leaders for each long-term goal

• Co-create “white” paper regarding Designing Resilient Native Communities

• Begin to identify funding sources

• Create vision paper for Entrepreneurship Institute for Community Designers