Ngā Tapuwae o ngā Mātua Tūpuna The Footprints of our Ancestors - The Role of Indigenous Culture in Promoting Development and Design in the Urban Environment: Insights from Vancouver and Waiwhetū

Abstract

Indigenous peoples throughout Canada and New Zealand have and continue to live within the urban environment, where they are commonly physically disconnected from their ancestral homelands. Indigenously grounded urban design and development principles provide an opportunity and mechanism to bring indigenous cultural connection within the urban environment. However, there still remains a gap in the incorporation of indigenous values, beliefs, principles and traditions within planning processes. Moreover, when indigenous values are recognised within the discourse of planning it is primarily done at the tribal or nation scale, therefore commonly neglecting the more pan-tribal indigenous values of the urban indigenous diaspora. The purpose of this research project is to explore this gap within the planning discourse from a First Nations and Māori perspective. The research project will use data drawn from four First Nation communities based within Vancouver, Canada and a predominantly Māori community in the Waiwhetū papakāinga based in Lower Hutt, Wellington. The research project illustrates how indigenous cultural values can be utilised in the development and design of urban environments. To achieve this, the research project argues that planners must develop policies and plans, which allow for and encourage indigenous communities to be decision makers in their urban environment and also allow them to drive their own projects according to their own values, traditions and customs.