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Iwama, Daniel Akihiro; Harding, Melanie Joy

This Portfolio is the culmination of our work in the Indigenous Community Planning Practicum at the Unversity of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Our practicum was completed with the Haida Village of Skidegate, located on Haida Gwaii. We supported Skidegate’s Comprehensive Community Planning (CCP) process from September 2013 to May 2014. The relationship between UBC-SCARP and Skidegate Band Council (SBC) is a strong and fruitful one. So much of our practicum builds on the hard work that was done in Year 1 of the CCP process. This Portfolio outlines our great body of work, the Comprehensive Community Planning process in Skidegate, and key reflections from our work. Over a period of 9 months, we made 6 trips to Skidegate, totalling approximately 1000 hours of work. This resulted in over 45 reports, presentations, and tools, and 13 community engagement workshops throughout the practicum. We began the practicum with the creation of a Student Partnership Protocol and a Community Learning Agreement. These documents set parameters for our work together as Master’s Candidates, and as student-community partners. We hoped to build reciprocal and nurturing relationships between all partners involved. Mutual respect, humility, gratitude, and a commitment to healing guided our work together. Our substantive findings included finalizing a vision for the CCP, and working with the community, staff, council, and Elders to decide on core ends objectives, or Directions. These 8 Directions informed the pathways (means objectives) and actions that will be pursued by the community of Skidegate to reach their vision. Through a preliminary prioritization process, the original list of over 150 actions was narrowed down to 44. Recommendations for a final rouond of prioritization are included in the CCP. The outcomes of this Practicum are diverse. The deliverables include our community contributions (i.e reports, presentations, facilitation plans, tools, et cetera), the Comprehensive Community Plan itself (Gud Ga Is: Being Together to Talk), and this portfolio which is the summation of all of our work. The outcomes are multi-faceted and perhaps more complex. Our work with the Haida Village of Skidegate moved the CCP process forward in their cycle. We built strong relationships between ourselves and community members, and between UBC and SBC. Our technical and relational skills were developed as emerging planning practitioners. Community members became engaged, or sustained their engagement in this important community process. Skill development was exchanged between ourselves and the CCP coordinator, Dana Moraes. And we attempted to contribute to decolonizing the planning profession through a commitment to community process, empowerment, and reciprocity.

Text

University of British Columbia. SCARP Graduating Projects

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0075862

Applied Science, Faculty of; Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of

Graduate

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