About

Call to Action: Co-Create a Future that Heals Land and Culture

ASLA 2023 Professional General Design Honor Award. Cloud Song: SCC Business School + Indigenous Culture Center. Scottsdale, Arizona. Colwell Shelor Landscape Architecture

Announced at the ASLA 2024 Conference on Landscape Architecture in Washington, D.C.

As landscape architects, we have a profound responsibility to design spaces that respect and regenerate the land. To truly achieve this, we must learn from and integrate Indigenous perspectives and practices that have sustained ecosystems and communities for millennia.
 
We invite landscape architects to take the following actions:

Respect Indigenous Knowledge: Indigenous knowledge offers invaluable insights into living in harmony with the natural world, preserving biodiversity, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and creating spaces that nurture both people and the planet. Seek out opportunities to learn from Indigenous leaders, scholars, and practitioners. Understand the histories, cultures, and relationships with the land that Indigenous communities hold. As a landscape architecture professional, learn how you can guide non-Indigenous communities to understand and apply traditional and indigenous knowledge in a respectful and responsible way. We can support and respect Indigenous-led movements that aim to reclaim ancestral lands along with the cultural, spiritual, ecological, and healing values that come with the land.

Empower Future Generations: Advocate for greater reciprocity between Indigenous knowledge systems and landscape architecture education. Provide better access to Indigenous knowledge by encouraging the institutionalization of dismissed voices, histories, knowledge, and technologies in landscape architecture education. Provide better access for Indigenous students and professionals to landscape architectural education. Their voices and perspectives are essential to shaping a future where design supports the sovereignty, health, and well-being of Indigenous peoples and all communities.

Engage with ASLA: Help us build an Indigenous landscape architects' network of ASLA members and work in collaboration with groups like the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design. And join us in Practice Basecamp following the general session to continue the conversation and learn more about ways to connect with and support Indigenous landscape architecture students and professionals.

Together, let’s expand our role as custodians of the planet, learn from Indigenous ways of knowing, and deepen our relationship with place and first peoples to co-create a future where landscape architects contribute to the healing of land and culture.

ASLA 2023 Professional General Design Honor Award. Cloud Song: SCC Business School + Indigenous Culture Center. Scottsdale, Arizona. Colwell Shelor Landscape Architecture

If you would like to get involved, please email us at info@asla.org.    

This call to action was developed by a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners:

• Julia Watson, Author, Lo—TEK Design by Radical Indigenism; Principal, Julia Watson llc; and Co-founder Lo—TEK Institute 
• Lyla June Johnston, Indigenous Artist, Musician, Scholar, and Community Organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages
• Anjelica S. Gallegos, Co-Founder and Director, Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD) 
• José de Jesús Leal, ASLA, Principal and Director, Native Nation Building Studio, MIG, and Member, ASLA Biodiversity and Climate Action Committee  
• Katie Riddle, ASLA, Managing Director, Programs, ASLA
• Jared Green, Hon. ASLA, Senior Manager, Climate Action, ASLA

ASLA 2023 Professional General Design Honor Award. Cloud Song: SCC Business School + Indigenous Culture Center. Scottsdale, Arizona. Colwell Shelor Landscape Architecture