“A self-declared ‘unashamedly Indigenous-centric book,’ Our Voices offers a model for Indigenous scholarship by carefully curating texts by a range of practitioners, academics and advocates with diverse perspectives on design. Our role as allies is to find a central place for Indigenous partners and their stories, and most importantly, to listen to those stories.
“The book’s creation itself exemplifies a decolonized process that included reimagining the review process, offering various presentation formats, and itself being of a place. (It’s described as being hosted in Aotearoa New Zealand, with a Māori elder offering a foreword and Māori designer Rau Hoskins closing the book.) A chapter that discusses these choices hints at the type of decisions one must make in the parallel—and vastly more complex—process of building architecture.”
Dr. Shelagh McCartney, OAA, MRAIC, is an assistant professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University. Read her full review of Our Voices here.
Read the full Season 8 of arcCA DIGEST, on Indigeneity, here.
