Growing up as a mixed urban Native in my predominantly white conservative town, sometimes I found myself wanting more of a connection with Indigenous community.

I didn't want to be surrounded by misinformed people who were just going to ask me, “Hey, does your family live in a Teepee!

?” Now those interactions really made it clear to me just how little people really understood where and how Indigenous people of Turtle Island live.

Since the beginning of humanity, Indigenous people have created homes, informed communities in both the structural, tangible sense of the word and the warm, fuzzy, emotional sense.

Some of those early Indigenous designs continue to serve as inspiration for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous architects as they develop the world's architecture, So that got me wondering what can Indigenous Collective thought teach us about infrastructure and community building?

There are significant differences between Western and Indigenous architecture, and I'm talking beyond building materials.

I mean, have you noticed the way people talk about Western European architecture and Indigenous architecture is different?

For example, Western structures are often praised as significant to understanding the cultural turning point of society's modernization and sophistication.

structures like the Roman Coliseum are regarded as being logically explainable markers of civilized society?

But when it comes to Indigenous cities and structures like Machu Picchu or Chichén Itzá, somehow conspiracy theorists boil down the creators of these places to aliens.

now, many historians that understand these cultures know the developmental work and genius that was put in.

The problem is the narrative that Indigenous people were far too primitive or lacked the understanding or technology to build these places.

It's just so outdated and not true.

While Western architecture is primarily evaluated by style, function and form.

Indigenous architecture fully embodies the principles and practices of the culture and community.

In the Euro-Western way of looking at architecture, it's largely for show.

There's a lot of posturing that occurs, especially with architects who are essentially driven by many facets of their own sense of creativity, innovation and quite honestly, ego.

On the other hand, from an Indigenous design perspective, those instructions are actually taken from what we call as Place Knowing the idea of what is the meaning of the places then where these are situated.

And how then does the building essentially act metaphorically in terms of bringing these types of values and to how they are reflected within the design itself?

A great example is Chaco Canyon.

It was created by the ancestors of the Pueblo peoples the Chacoans.

And it was a site of incredible cultural vision unlike any other seen before or since.

It probably represented the epitome, the apex of the building style and the foundation of what it is that we call today Pueblo Architecture.

It's made up of these rounded rooms and features.

Incredible innovations.

Early Puebloans noted precipitation patterns during the rainy season and developed irrigation systems to help replenish moisture to their corn crops.

From a Pueblo perspective, I can say categorically that when you look at the way a village is situated, it's always attendant to where the central place exists, which is the plaza.

this is not anything that was brought from the outside.

It wasn't the colonizers that came in and said, you have to design your communities around a plaza.

Many archeologists believe that this architectural feat wasn't properly valued by the Chacoans, by the way they just left it at its height of creation.

But the reality is this site has shown seven generations of work within its walls.

I mean, can you imagine making blueprints for an architectural feat that you won't get to see in your lifetime or your children's lifetime?

So the seven generations model, actually we use Pueblo Bonito as a way to illustrate that those people who began that actually did not live long enough to see its completion.

what was it that was so compelling that the successive generations never lost sight of that.

And from the beginning to the end, it never lost that sense of cohesion and ended up in this beautiful edifice, which essentially to this day holds many mysteries in terms of looking at what is Indigenous knowledge and its relationship to the cosmos, its relationship to humankind, to philosophy.

It's all embedded within this particular place.

A key understanding in many Indigenous cultures here in Turtle Island and abroad is that we're stewards of the land.

As long as we take care of it, it'll take care of us.

We're in harmony with nature not removed from it.

A lot of Indigenous structures like Machu Picchu are built in ways that are good for the longevity of the people and the environment itself.

An example of this would be building into mountains instead of on top of them in order to not disrupt the natural structure of the landscape or the animals.

opposite of that in many Eurocentric belief systems.

Instead of being harmonious with nature, mankind exists to dominate it and force it to shape to their desires and needs, and in many instances, completely decimating the land.

Even within my own lifetime, I saw Chaco Canyon, changed drastically from an open area that was really incredible in terms of its landscape.

But after the oil and gas extraction began to occur largely as a result of these leases that were done by BLM as well as the state, then it's really lost that kind of sense of place.

Okay, so now we know that Indigenous architectural design is born out of a culturally responsive and value based approach to community development.

But obviously colonization tried to eliminate Indigenous innovation and architecture by forcibly removing us from our culture, including our land and lifeways There are plenty of examples throughout history that had a role in reshaping Indigenous communities and where and how we lived.

For example, the Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing that took place throughout the 1830’s as part of the Indian Removal Act, a hundred thousand south eastern Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from the land to live in so-called “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi.

15,000 people died.

Then in 1851, the Indian Appropriations Act created the reservation system to once again move Indigenous tribes to even smaller pieces of land.

And lastly, in 1952, the Urban Indian Relocation program was created to entice Indigenous people from the reservations to live in the cities where there were allegedly better job opportunities.

But really, the US government hoped we'd remain disconnected from our culture, traditions and community.

The introduction of what we call HUD Housing, which is housing and urban development, this was initiated in the 1960’s and it was essentially an attempt in order to try and bring what they considered to be traditional and vernacular traditions up to a Western standard.

And of course, a lot of that was intended to not only simply providing a place, a house, but in a sense also quit bringing in values from the outside.

So yeah, where the Diné, Apaches and Great Plains tribes were once primarily living in hogans, wickiups, and teepees, they were forced to abruptly transition to living in trailers or Western designed houses on essentially uninhabitable government issued pieces of land or in cities.

But this historical trend is about so much more than land grabs and the physical removal of Indigenous people, The cultural genocide and severing of knowledge was also a strategic weapon that's been used to assimilate and eliminate.

Many times when we talk with individuals within urban areas, the first thing they say is someday they're going back to their community.

so in their minds, then it's not a diaspora per se, but it's just kind of an interlude in terms of what they consider to be their lifestyle and that they continue going on this sense of migration to advantage what they gain from an urban area and go back into their own localities, into what they consider to be their home communities.

Despite the colonial push to remove Indigenous peoples from their traditional ways of life.

Here in Santa Fe, you can spot a “manufactured re-Indigenizing” of the area because apparently capitalism and gentrifiers get to decide when Indigenous culture is relevant.

In all seriousness, it's kind of a slap in the face, that the same dominant culture that nearly eradicated us and forced us to neglect aspects of our traditional culture is now selling gentrified Adobe mansions for $3 million.

Yes, I am being astronomically freaking for real.

$3 million for a home that was traditionally made with compacted soil, a little bit of soul and some fine Indigenous craftsmanship.

I mean, Western architects like Frank Lloyd Wright are praised as innovators for working with the land and local natural materials.

But they were inspired by Indigenous tribes who were doing this work for millennia and still don't receive the proper credit in most cases.

building traditional architecture and including Indigenous design in mainstream infrastructure isn't just a cool way of physically demonstrating that Natives are still here.

the work our experts are doing, ensures important cultural knowledge is being passed down and Indigenous lifeways that have been keys to sustainability are being integrated.

Despite the physical removal, despite the cultural robbery, and in spite of colonization, we're still here building community, whether that's for Feast Days or ceremonies or reconnection or in a Minecraft server.

Seriously, I just found out that Indigenous Minecraft is a thing.

Until next time.