Indigenous Design

This guide serves as a resource for SOAD-W 300 Design in Context and Culture. Focusing on Indigenous Designers and Design Firms, this guide focuses on what indigenous design means--moving beyond just the aesthetic value. Through resources and linked designers, this guide interrogates the thought-process behind indigenous design.

While looking through this guide, ask yourself: How do Indigenous designers think about and approach design? How do the designers design excellence, and how is that different from western values of design?

We would like to begin our guide by acknowledging and honoring the Indigenous communities native to this region, and recognizing that Indiana University Bloomington is built on Indigenous homelands and resources. We recognize the myaamiaki, Lënape, Bodwéwadmik, and saawanwa people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land.

We are dedicated to centering Indigenous voices & perspectives, improving community relationships, correcting the narrative, and making the IUB campus a more supportive and inclusive place for Native and Indigenous students, faculty & staff.  We encourage everyone to engage with contemporary communities, to learn the histories of this land, to look at who has and does not have access to its resources, and to examine your own place, abilities, and obligations within this process of reparative work that is necessary to promote a more equitable and socially just Indiana University Bloomington.

(From the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center)

Locations listed for designers and firms is based on how they are listed on the firms' or designers' websites. Thus, some are Native Land titles, and some use contemporary colonizer names. To learn more about mapping Indigenous land, check out Native-Land.ca. Similarly, indigenous groups and identities are based off of the firms' and designers' websites.