Introduction
The field of planning has experienced a vast broadening over recent years in parallel to becoming increasingly transnational. With an early emphasis on urban design and form, planners have added expertise in social issues, and planning currently spans several specific foci including the environment, women, food security and other contemporary arenas. These cut across an expansion of its practice, encouraged by transnational arrangements such as NAFTA. For example, planning may be practiced throughout North America without visa restrictions under that Agreement, and many planners are now working in jurisdictions other than where they trained (Witherby 2007). These trends generate the need for a profession that has the flexibility and skills to understand differences and appreciate its strengths, and the capacity to translate various experiences into specific and local situations. However, planning education, as suggested by Lovering (2004), has lagged in preparing students for the challenges and demands of international work. While planning embodies certain technical skills that may transfer relatively easily, at the same time it is highly contextualized in the traditions and cultures in which it takes place, requiring sensitivity to particular institutions and modes of working. Keys to success in contemporary reality are the skills of transferring knowledge and understanding difference, and the capacity to build common understandings and practices.

The area of indigenous planning is rapidly strengthening and consolidating itself as a specific focus for planning in the Americas. Its transnationality, that is, its sharing of certain characteristics across nations and places, invites a collaborative approach that is well-suited to an exchange program. The Indigenous Planning Exchange 2007 (IPEX7) marks an important step in advancing the capability of higher education to prepare students with the talents needed to contribute to the planning of healthy, sustainable and self-reliant indigenous communities. The proposed program addresses a gap in the higher education curriculum through a gradual building of course materials, from an initial studio in indigenous issues, leading in the next year to region-specific theory courses on indigenous planning, and in the third year the experiences are pulled together into a North American indigenous planning course. A full curriculum in indigenous planning will be developed based on these new courses and existing courses, and will be disseminated for broad adoption. This application begins with a brief statement on the nature of indigenous planning before describing the objectives, methods and activities proposed.

The Nature of Indigenous Planning
There is clearly a large amount of diversity among North American indigenous communities, nevertheless, two sets of considerations help delineate the nature of indigenous planning: factors internal to indigenous populations, and the planning issues faced by indigenous communities. In a key statement on the former, a member of the IPEX7 consortium has argued, “there are some unifying ideological factors that serve as the foundations of a long-overdue paradigm shift such as indigenous planning” (Jojola, nd, p. 14).  As he explains, central to these is that indigenous planning processes are informed by indigenous worldviews, under-pinned by relationships with land:

Land tenure is distinguished by long and sustained patterns of continuous ownership. In indigenous communities, ownership is sustained over successive generations. Land became the embodiment of collective groups whose goal is to sustain the productivity of the land onto those who will inherit it. As such, land became a birthright and collective stewardship is the primary mode of maintaining it. (p. 5)

This leads, in marked contrast with western thinking, to planning outlooks that embrace the past, present and future, and the capacity to transform and adapt. IPEX7 seeks to strengthen indigenous planning both by building and delivering a curriculum consistent with these outlooks, and by fostering social networks among educational institutions and stakeholders in North American indigenous planning, including indigenous organizations, professional associations, government and the private sector, that will validate and reinforce them.

Indigenous communities face particular planning issues stemming from their relationships with non-indigenous communities. Large sections of the indigenous populations in North America, in both urban and rural settings, live in communities that are poorly planned and that suffer deficits in areas such as infrastructure, housing and employment. In Canada the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) highlighted these issues, and they have fuelled debate among planning academics studying rural/reserve and urban Aboriginal communities (e.g., Nilsen 2005; Peters 2002, 2005; Skelton 2002; Walker 2005, 2006; Wolfe 1989). In many situations, planning that has taken place has not operated in the best interests of indigenous communities; it has served to foster relations of assimilation and dependency (Nilsen 2005; Sandercock 2004) and has failed to incorporate worldviews of indigenous people (Duerden et al. 1996). Clearly, one of the basic problems is that in a great number of cases, planning has been carried out by planners not of indigenous origin, lacking awareness of relevant issues and the tools to deal with them. There is a need for indigenous planners to respond to the needs of indigenous communities, and for planners to have training that will enable them to plan in culturally appropriate ways. The proposed project will contribute to the capability of higher education to prepare students, of origins in both indigenous and other communities, for important planning jobs in indigenous organizations, governments and the private sector.

A major orientation of IPEX7 is towards supporting indigenous planning through international collaboration. There is increasing recognition of the need for international solutions, as we see in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which has strengthened international cooperation on the wellbeing of indigenous communities since its inauguration in the early years of this Millennium, advising the UN Economic and Social Council on human rights, the environment, development, education and health (Whall 2003, p. 636). Notwithstanding this instructive precedent, at present a full curriculum for indigenous planning does not exist, and outside the consortium there are only two institutions offering degrees in indigenous planning: Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia and Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand. An international approach is required because there is insufficient experience in any one jurisdiction to build the curriculum. Despite the common elements embodied in indigenous planning, each indigenous community has its own circumstances and relationships with non-indigenous communities and nation states, and assessing experiences across these communities can enable the construction of a well-rounded curriculum. Similarly, national and regional orientations have hampered the emergence of a seamless pan-American environment for social networking required to sustain indigenous planning.

Scope, Objectives and Consequences
All of the participating institutions offer courses in indigenous planning or related fields. (We note that at the partner institution in Chiapas, the work of students and faculty in economics and other disciplines consists of planning activities, even though, strictly speaking, it is not identified as planning.) Our intention is to expand offerings and focus them on North American indigenous planning, as a model curriculum is developed, delivered and tested. Course materials will be adopted within IPEX7 institutions (see evaluation plan) and will be made available for broader adoption by the end of the project. The consortium will address social networking issues, internally and with broader communities, needed to strengthen indigenous planning. Social networking is important in an emerging professional area because it provides a base of support for practitioners attempting to develop and implement practices different from the mainstream.

Sources
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Skelton, I. 2002. Residential mobility of Aboriginal single mothers in Winnipeg: An exploratory study of chronic moving. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment vol 17, 127-144.

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Witherby, A. 2007. The internationalization of planning. Planetizen: The Planning & Development Network. Accessed 29 January 2007 at: http://www.planetizen.com/node/22711

Wolfe, J. 1989. Approaches to planning in native Canadian communities: A review and commentary on settlement problems and the effectiveness of planning practice. Plan Canada vol 29, 63-79.