Planning Success and Failure on the Navajo Nation

Working on the Navajo Nation – America’s largest indigenous group by land mass and population – has been a rewarding and complex experience that offers an important case study to planners, engineers, and economic-development professionals who want their projects to make positive changes.

After decades of inaction – in some cases due to legal issues between Hopi and Navajo peoples – the Navajo Nation began important planning initiatives to cultivate smart and culturally sensitive development in key corridors around national park attractions, including the Grand Canyon and Canyon de Chelly. Presenters highlight lessons learned, strategies, and tools needed to create culturally sensitive, regulatory-compliant, useful plans. The area’s rural nature, multicultural demands, historic sensitivities, and regulatory demands (from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, Navajo Nation, State of Arizona, nonprofits, local officials, and others) required every tool in the planning toolbox, as well as some improvisational skills.

Learn how to overcome and manage technical resource gaps, language barriers, multicultural ignorance, and incredible pressure to overcome a legacy of political and social oppression.

NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Advanced. For more on learning-level descriptions, visit our General Information Page.