Land Use Planning for and by Indigenous People

Paul Daley writes: "The vexed question of coexistence between Indigenous people and culture, and the settler state, is central to a new book, Planning for Coexistence? Recognizing Indigenous Rights Through Land-use Planning in Canada and Australia, by the Australian academic Libby Porter and Canadian Janice Barry."

The book considers case studies of coexistence experiments in urban contexts in Australia and Canada—examples of Indigenous communities "testing and renegotiating the use of traditional but now urbanised lands and how governments and planning authorities respond."

In case we need reminding of the need to improve the planning process for Indigenous people in the United States, Dakota Access Pipeline protests took a violent and dangerous turn this week, when North Dakota law enforcement sprayed protestors with water cannons on a sub-freezing evening.