Balancing the Words and the Images

by Ken Johnson

The increasing demand and need for aboriginal communities to complete community land use plans is creating a dilemma for professional planners, senior government departments, and most importantly the aboriginal communities. From a traditional aboriginal community perspective, a land use planning document may be viewed as just another report that is the product of outsiders to their community. Aboriginal communities want to develop their communities in a way that is consistent with and reflects their inherent right to self government, their culture, their values and their traditions (Reference 1), a nd planning documents must convey this in a n appropriate manner.

From a senior government perspective, a land use plan provides a singular presentation of information regarding community growth, which ultimately translates into the necessary capital, operation and maintenance funding a community requires. The funds available to individual communities are competing against each other, therefore senior governments not only need a means to identify the funding amounts, but also to attach a priority to these limited funds.

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Straddling Two Cultures Professional planners are now faced with the challenge of satisfying the fundamental needs of both groups, which in some respects are quite far apart. The solution to this challenge may rest with the recognition that one of the basic cultural elements of aboriginal communities is that written language is not fundamental to the culture, but rather a supplement of the past century from European cultures.

Applying this concept suggests that the written word should be equally balanced with images in the community planning document. These images, which include photographs, drawings, and maps, should be integral to the planning document - not part of an appendix to the document.

The graphic technology made available over the past ten years will make the application of this concept much easier (Reference 2). Powerful computer processors, versatile graphic software, scanners, digital cameras, and colour plotters are the tools that planners must use in working with aboriginal communities to create planning documents that are culturally relevant, and administratively functional. The written words are necessary for living in a modern global society, and are essential to an aboriginal community for communicating with those who have financial and administrative responsibilities to their communities.

However, the ultimate success of the planning work may be judged by its relevance and appropriateness to the entire community, and not just the community administration, or the senior government officials.

Land use planning has become, for the most part, an inherent part of community growth in urban and rural settings. Not only is it a legislated aspect of community growth, but it has to some extent become an expected part of a public process to sustain the demands of a transparent process on things in the public domain. Clearly in the “western� culture, where written language has evolved over a period of thousands of years, and mass written communication has evolved in excess of 500 hundred years, a written expression of planning related work is essential to the process.

The question should be raised as to the appropriateness of this same level of written communication for the aboriginal culture, where within the same time frame, with the exception of the past century, the cultural was entirely oral.

The Oral Tradition People from oral cultures generally live in close connection with their environment and with each other (Reference 3).

They tend not to think in abstract ways about their world and their lives, but rather in concrete and operational terms.

by Ken Johnson

Their learning is 'hands-on,' by apprenticeship or discipleship. On the other hand, the practice of writing presupposes distance in time and space between the author and the reader. Writing, and especially print, encourages the development of the mental habits of distance and objectivity.

Sound envelops and bonds speaker and hearer, while writing marks the separation of author and reader. The printing press is a technology that allows us to keep the world, and each other, at arm's length. In an oral culture, elders are respected and appreciated for their indispensable memories, whereas in a print culture one need not heed one's elders in order to benefit from the accumulated wisdom of one's culture. Once printed books become readily available, one can hold the wisdom of the ages--the minds of persons long dead--in one's hands.

Fundamentally, there are two communication processes by which people learn (Reference 4). The inherent way for learning in the non aboriginal culture is the literary method, where information is transmitted by means of systematic and sequential lessons drawn from events and information. In contrast, the inherent way for learning in aboriginal cultural is oral, which uses stories and symbols as the means of conveying ideas and information. The people from these different cultures are very different in the way they hear, learn, and communicate information about the world in which they live.

Oral communicators learn by means of stories and symbols, and this applies in every area of their lives. Research among oral communicators, whether living in isolated areas or in cities, produced the conclusion that their retention was seldom higher than 20 percent of the knowledge shared when communicated by means of logical outlines of the information.

However, when stories or a chronological teaching method was used, retention increased to at least 75-80 percent. Also, the attrition of information was dramatically reduced among the people who learned in ways more compatible with their normal learning processes.

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Biography

by Ken Johnson Ken R. Johnson is a land use planning and engineering consultant with Earth Tech Canada in Edmonton. Ken's first opportunity to work with an aboriginal community was over 20 years ago as an undergraduate civil engineering student.

His next opportunity to work with aboriginal

communities did not come again until 1987 as a resident of the Northwest Territories. Since 1987, Ken has worked almost exclusively with aboriginal communities of the far north. Over the past three years he has had the opportunity to bring his experience to work with aboriginal communities "south of 60".

Ken has a number of on-line

publications including “uske” (Cree word for “land'), which resides in his on-line journal called “Cryofront.” Ken may be reached at ken.johnson@earthtech.ca

One cannot assume that oral communicators cannot learn or that they are slow learners. In fact they can learn as fast as word culture, but they do not process information in the same way as a word culture individual. The wisdom of the ages has been passed down for generations by means of oral communicators.

If an oral communicator lives in a community where a majority of the people in the community are oral communicators, they have little trouble functioning. However, as oral communicators find themselves in the minority in a community, it becomes ever more difficult for them to function.

Aboriginal Approach to Documentation In aboriginal communities the documentation of a planning process serves a number of purposes. The documentation serves a fundamental role for senior governments, who face increasingly greater and more complex demands on their skills, and their decreasing administrative and financial resources.

The financial related planning to serve aboriginal communities is generally referred to as capital planning (Reference 5), which produces a document that usually operates in increments of 5 or 10 years. Capital planning is needed to provide the technical information in support of decision making for the construction of community capital works. In advance of a capital plan, what is called

“comprehensive planning” is required as the on-going process of determining future development needs that will best meet an aboriginal community's needs and aspirations and make best use of all its resources.

Another tool in advance of a capital plan is the “physical development plan” which outlines spatial areas of the community in which physical development of a specific nature is planned, or will be allowed to take place. This planning process is supposed to focus the community and its leaders on development alternatives and accommodate community participation on where, how, when and what development should take place.

The capital planning documents, which are supported by land use planning information, are necessarily the product of engineers and not planners. Although qualified to produce technical documents, the supporting costs and rationale, engineers are generally not trained in the process of translating this information into a presentation that is understandable by the aboriginal community, and useful to the financial planning structure within senior governments.

The common ground for this document is ultimately a visual presentation.

The planning documentation to balance the words and the pictures may best be described as a poster plan, which literally uses a poster presentation format of maps with limited written information on land use objectives and guidelines. The creation of a poster plan does not restrict a community at any time from expanding the existing documents to create more comprehensive documents. Most aboriginal communities would be expected to pursue a more comprehensive text based document in the future, and some communities would pursue the more comprehensive document simultaneously with the poster plan.

Modern digital technologies have provided an opportunity for poster plans to flourish (Reference 2).

Digital image collection is a key element, which includes the collection of original digital images by camera from site inspections, as well as digital images from scanned sources such as airphotos.

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Digital photo images allow simple manipulation to fit a variety of presentation formats from single photo images, to mosaics that visually show the intent of a planning process.

This presentation format reflects a photojournalism style, where pictures and words tell a more complete story, and provide a more appealing presentation.

by Ken Johnson

The relatively simple preparation of a digitized series of airphotos of a community into a mosaic offers another perspective for a planning project. The use of topographic maps in the presentation of community planning perspectives may have limited appeal within some aboriginal communities.

The airphoto mosaic is literally a picture of the entire community, which everyone in the community may relate to in some fashion. In a cross-cultural situation the picture, map or airphoto is worth more that a “thousand words� because in some cases the native word may not exist for the planning concept being presented.

Images fit well into a communication hierarchy in aboriginal community planning. This hierarchy extends from elders, middle aged individuals, young people, aboriginal administrators, through to senior government representatives.

Balancing the words and images means providing information that conveys the intent of the planning process and stimulates interest in the outcome of the process from all levels of the hierarchy. The image becomes the key communication tool at the initiation of the planning process.

It reflects back to the community as part of the narrative or story of what has been learned by the planner, and how this information relates to the planning process. Synthesizing the information into the administrative context of a planning document, while maintaining the elements of the initial basis upon which the visual relationship with the community began, may be the ultimate challenge for the planner.

1. Bell, Mike. The Changing Face of Community Development in the North: From the Power Paradigm to the Spirit Paradigm. An Essay, 1999.

2. Johnson, Kenneth R. Using Technology for Land Use Planning in the Communities of Northern Canada. Proceedings of Canadian Institute of Planners Annual Conference. May, 2002.

3. From Orality to Literacy to Hypertext: Back to the Future? http://homepages.bw.edu/~rfowler/pubs/secondoral /oral.html

4. Jim Slack Western Analytical Cultures vs.

Oral Relational Societies http://www.newwway.org/strategy_network/wester n_analytical_vs_oral_cultures.htm 5. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Program Directives, 20-1, Volume 1. Indian and Inuit Affairs, Chaper 6, Capital Facilities and Community Services, PD 6.13, Capital Funding: Capital Planning Projects. March, 1988.

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