Native Cultural Design: Exploring Design to Address Historical Trauma and Assist with Village Relocation on the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, WA

Abstract

Native American communities are in need of improvement, which I attribute to historical trauma from the deplorable acts that Native American communities have gone through. Historical trauma creates difficulties for the planning and design professionals who seek to work with Native communities. Through new creative processes and thought, designers and planners are offering a new sense of agency that Native communities have been without since the colonization of the land they once inhabited. I present new concepts that are empowering Native communities through world and local examples. I argue that it is through these new concepts that the Quinault Indian Nation can relocate their lower village, due to a tsunami threat, while maintaining their Tribal culture and traditions imperative to the integrity of their Nation’s history and future.