Abstract Body

Very often urban planning is presented as a progressive discipline, just as cities are normalized as progressive landscapes representing human “achievement”. And so people often take a surface view of the ‘problems’ of the city and efforts to 'remake' our urban spaces within frameworks of sustainability, livability, equity and access. But what about questioning the urban form and governance system itself? The stories we tell ourselves about how we got here and what is possible? In the North American context, and in other lands shaped by colonialism, urbanization has been fueled by the continuous 'goldrush mentality' of terra nullius, the Doctrine of Discovery, harmful ideas about the land as commodity and so on. The city in these contexts stands as testimony to continued efforts to eradicate the First Peoples, to exploit Black and racialized people, to extract resources in the frontier expansionism of nation-building. Meanwhile, this violation of pre-existing Indigenous laws and ways of living, well-established governance systems and economies based upon sophisticated place-based knowledge systems funded wealth and prosperity of the colonial states. And here we are in an ecological crisis and the people with the deep sustainability knowledge and relational legal orders continue to be left out of the stories and decision-making processes for rethinking cities. There is minimal listening to, and acknowledgement of, the truths that colonization continues to form the foundation of the imbalanced, extractive, non-relational ways of living on the land and mistreating humans and all beings who share these urban places. Can we speak truths about the depths and brilliance of Indigenous laws and knowledge systems as the missing link to rethinking the dominant culture of cities? Focusing on the power of story, Kamala Todd, Cree-Métis adjunct professor, urban community planning professional, and filmmaker will bring her 20 years of experience within Vancouver to share about the necessary and promising work of Indigenizing and decolonizing our cities. She will share how the work to revitalize Indigenous laws, for example, offers great hope for restoring relational ways of living on the (urbanized) land.