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The unplanning settlers: Keisha Maloney, ‘Planning With the Animacy of the Land’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 2025

20Apr25

Abstract: Settler planners who are committed to advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in settler colonial cities are actively decolonizing their praxis. In this Viewpoint, I discuss how settler colonialism is embedded in planning Canadian cities to argue that settler planners should critically interrogate their relationship with the land to address colonialism’s ecological and social legacies. Learning from Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and the principle of reciprocity in Indigenous methodologies, I demonstrate how planning practice can advance reconciliation and sustainability when planners shift their understanding of land as property to land as relation. I then show how planners can plan with the animacy of the land across various aspects of planning practice. Planning with the animacy of the land respects the land as a living entity that holds stories and knowledge in its sedimented layers and thus can honor Indigenous land relations while advancing more just, sustainable solutions.


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