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Panel Discussion

Earth Week: Designing For, By, and With: Indigenous Voices of the Land | Education, Institutions, and the Path Forward

Event poster with image of foggy landscape and event registration details.

"Designing For, By, and With: Indigenous Voices of the Land" is a four-month series of shared discussions, presentations, and reflections that seeks to emphasize deliberation, storytelling, and co-creation--core values of Indigenous design--and to propose discussion as a vital design tool. We are welcoming leaders of tribal nations, land stewardship movements, and varied design practices to speak about their work within Indigenous communities.

Panel Discussion

Earth Week: Designing For, By, and With: Indigenous Voices of the Land | Education, Institutions, and the Path Forward

"Designing For, By, and With: Indigenous Voices of the Land" is a four-month series of shared discussions, presentations, and reflections that seeks to emphasize deliberation, storytelling, and co-creation--core values of Indigenous design--and to propose discussion as a vital design tool. We are welcoming leaders of tribal nations, land stewardship movements, and varied design practices to speak about their work within Indigenous communities.

Event poster with image of foggy landscape and event registration details.
When: Wed, Apr 22 2026, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Format:
In Person
Host:
McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology
Location:

Kleinman Forum, Fisher Fine Arts Library
220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia PA

Free and open to the public

Audience:
Alumni
Faculty
Staff
Students
Campus Initiative:
Built Environment
Earth Week
Natural Environment
Registration: Register Now

Native American Nations have long been excluded from formal design structures, yet their contributions to design theory, pedagogy, and practice are sophisticated, visionary, and deeply rooted in landscape and architecture. This discussion series targets this disconnect by bringing together four panels of Indigenous voices and their non-Native collaborators to shift how we approach design—advocating for processes that are for, by, and with Indigenous communities.

Through a 4-month series of shared discussions, presentations, and reflections, this initiative seeks to emphasize deliberation, storytelling, and co-creation—core values of Indigenous design—and proposes discussion as a vital design tool. Our discussions also aim to highlight the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), reinforcing the criticality of Indigenous wisdom in creating sustainable, community-centered, and resilient landscapes.

This series is co-sponsored by the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Landscape Architecture, and Cal Poly Pomona’s Office of Tribal Relations.

Panel Four: Education, Institutions, and the Path Forward

Panelists:

Chris Cornelius, Professor and former Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of New Mexico

Anjelica Gallegos, Director of the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning and Design (ISAPD)

Elsa MH Mäki, Assistant Director at the Buell Center, Columbia GSAPP

 

Moderator: Dagny Elise Carlsson, M.Arch & MLA '27, Weitzman School of Design

Register Now