AIA CEU Credit Offered: 1.5 AIA LU|HSW

Presentation Descriptions

Ted Jojola, PhD – Director, Indigenous Design + Planning Institute, School of Architecture + Planning, University of New Mexico

Ted Jojola’s work on Indigenous sovereignty emphasizes that sovereignty is not simply a legal status granted by a colonial government, but an inherent capacity of Indigenous nations to govern themselves, sustain their cultures, and determine their own futures. Through Indigenous planning and design, Jojola connects sovereignty to control over land, community development, cultural expression, and decision-making. He argues that conventional planning often imposes Western assumptions that marginalize Indigenous knowledge and priorities. Indigenous planning instead draws upon traditional knowledge, cultural values, land relationships, and community participation to restore self-determination. His work demonstrates that planning can become a practical form of decolonization: communities reclaim authority over their narratives, spaces, institutions, and futures. Sovereignty therefore operates not only through political institutions, but also through everyday practices of cultural continuity and community development. (School of Architecture and Planning)

Learning Objectives:

1. Explain how Jojola distinguishes Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination from conventional Western concepts of political authority and planning.
2. Apply Jojola’s principles of Indigenous planning to analyze how control over land, culture, design, and community development can function as expressions of sovereignty.

Michaela Shirley, MCRP – PhD Candidate in American Studies, University of New Mexico

Michaela’s presentation examines the relationship between education and Diné sovereignty through the intertwined histories of land, community formation, and planning. Drawing on archival research, Indigenous planning scholarship, and autoethnographic reflection, she reconsiders dominant narratives that portrayed Diné communities as lacking the social institutions necessary for modern citizenship and development. Focusing on educational initiatives ranging from boarding schools to community schools, she argues that schooling has long functioned as a planning infrastructure shaping relationships among land, governance, and futurity. At the same time, Diné communities have maintained and renewed their own systems of learning grounded in kinship, place-based knowledge, and collective responsibility. Through stories rooted in her experiences and the teachings of her nalí, Isabelle Shirley, she explores how sheep camp itself has served as a teacher and how everyday forms of education has been practiced beyond the boundaries of formal institutions. By bringing together historical analysis and personal narrative, this presentation asks what it means to understand sovereignty not only as a political status but as a lived practice sustained through education.

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to understand how education historically and presently can function as a planning infrastructure for Indigenous sovereignty by shaping relationships among land, knowledge, community, and future generations.

Theodore Edaakie, AIA, NCARB, AICAE – Architect at Studio Southwest Architects

This session examines how Indigenous architects and planners are transforming the architecture, engineering, and construction industry by placing Tribal sovereignty at the center of planning and design. Sovereignty is expressed not simply through cultural imagery, but through the authority of Native communities to define priorities, make decisions, allocate resources, and determine what constitutes project success. Through case studies, interactive tools, and dialogue, participants will explore how early collaboration with Indigenous design professionals can produce culturally grounded project scopes, stronger funding proposals, and more sustainable economic and community outcomes. The session emphasizes Indigenous principles—including respect for land, relationships, language, cultural continuity, collective well-being, reciprocity, and responsibility to future generations—as foundations for decision-making throughout the design process. Moving beyond the goal of decolonizing established practices, the session calls for Indigenizing the systems through which projects are conceived, funded, designed, and delivered, ensuring that Tribal communities retain meaningful authority over their built environments and futures.

Learning Objectives:

1. Explain how Tribal sovereignty is advanced when Indigenous communities retain decision-making authority throughout project conception, funding, planning, design, and implementation.
2. Apply Indigenous principles—including respect for land, cultural continuity, reciprocity, collective well-being, and responsibility to future generations—to create culturally grounded and sustainable design processes.