Indigenous recognition in state-based planning systems: Understanding textual mediation in the contact zone

Abstract

Indigenous peoples around the world are claiming and, in many cases, achieving recognition of their customary land rights, with significant challenges for planning systems. How should we understand both the nature of this demand and its politics of recognition? This article demonstrates how the insights and principles contained in political and democratic theory, along with a methodological framework inspired by Institutional Ethnography informs the conceptualization of what is happening between Indigenous peoples and planning systems in British settler-states. Using the highly evocative language of the 'contact zone' and an illustration from environmental planning in British Columbia, Canada, this article indicates how reading these theories together builds an approach for critically analysing the textual constraints placed on the social spaces where Indigenous peoples and state-based planning systems meet.

Getting to Common Ground: A Comparison of Ontario, Canada’s Provincial Policy Statement and the Auckland Council Regional Policy Statement with Respect to Indigenous Peoples

“…In turn, the primary method for further inquiry was document analysis (Cope, 2010). The justifications for the use of document analysis draws heavily from Barry and Porter (2011) and Porter and Barry (2013) as the critical examination of planning law and governance in British Columbia, Canada and Victoria, Australia, evident in both articles, highlights the need to analyze statutory planning texts, including legislation, policies, guidelines and regulations to better understand planning's conflicting relationship with Indigenous peoples. It became clear that for this research it was just as important to understand the content of strategic-level policy statements that shape the everyday as it was to understand daily practices and processes that can advance Indigenous peoples' rights, concerns, and knowledge as well as create uneven power relations and starting points for communities.…”

“…Recognition, the second element of the framework, is meant to focus the policy analysis on how state-based planning, as mediated through texts, extends horizon- (Table 2) centre on identifying the highly circumscribed sites of recognition within each policy statement where Indigenous peoples, treaties, rights and traditional territories are brought forward (Barry & Porter, 2011;Porter & Barry, 2013). The second question and set of indicators (Table 2) then examine the latent content of flagged sites of recognition to evaluate whether Indigenous peoples are framed by the discourse of policy statements as just another stakeholder (Healey, 1997) or as equal and active partners with equal footing in the planning process (RCAP, 1996;Borrows, 1997;Maaka & Fleras, 2005;Porter, 2006).…”

Re-Thinking Housing: From Physical Manifestation of Colonial Planning Policy to Community-Focused Networks

“…terventions not at the policy level, but in the processes of engagement. A frame of analysis was required to understand how such disruptions could be projected onto the built environment and we adopted the concept of the 'contact zone,' a space, both physical and perceived, in which planning processes take place (Barry & Porter, 2011). First conceptualized by Mary Louise Pratt (1991Pratt ( , 1992, the contact zone is a place of meeting and conflict between cultures.…”

“…Housing's physical form is a reflection of this discourse, transposing the dominant values onto the built form. Barry and Porter (2011) importantly understand the contact zones as, "contested sites that have both transformative and oppressive possibilities" (p. 173). Disruptions at the level of implementation have the potential to realign discourse within the contact zone-shifting power or reassigning responsibilities, creating wholly new outcomes.…”

Questioning Planning, Connecting Places and Times: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…In other words, despite adhering to Western political economy, de Soto's idea had a role in the overcoming of the traditional, rationalistic approach to informal settlements' regeneration -that is, land-use zoning, demolition and reconstruction. Her article reminds us how deeply the tools of Western-inspired planning practice are grounded in particular systems of land and property rights, an issue which is also raised by those studying at the tension between indigenous people's conception of land and such systems (Lane and Hibberd, 2005;Sandercock, 2004;Meir, 2009;Barry and Porter 2012).…”