PERSPECTIVES 02: CIRCLE

CIRCLE is a group of landscape designers, educators, and scholars who advocate for greater inclusion of Indigenous voices in environmental design and planning. Their collaborative work includes the discussion series “Designing For, By and With: Indigenous Voices of the Land,” hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology and the Department of Landscape Architecture at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. This series, held from January to April 2026, brought together eleven speakers from across North America to discuss their work within Indigenous communities. The multi-time-zone, cross-border collaboration held four panels, including “Sovereignty in Design,” “Designing For and From Community,” “Sacred Sites, Storytelling and Memory in Place,” and “Education, Institutions, and the Path Forward.” 

CIRCLE was founded by Desiree Martinez, a member of the Gabrielino (Tongva) community and Tribal Relations and NAGPRA/CalNAGPRA Director at Cal Poly Pomona; Muriel Fernandez, a faculty member of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona; Tera Johnson, dual MLA + MCP from University of California, Berkeley now working at the California Botanic Garden; and Dagny Elise Carlsson, a Penn dual-degree MLA / MArch student and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and Shawnee Tribe. 

Rather than a traditional interview, the group conducted a roundtable discussion following the format of their regular meetings. CIRCLE has always functioned in a non-hierarchical, collaborative manner, and thus the roundtable consists of discussion questions intended to encourage reflection on CIRCLE’s collaborative process. Topics included the speaker series, their collective goals, and their hopes for how these discussions might influence design practice more broadly. 

Discussion Question  What does CIRCLE stand for? Why CIRCLE? 

Muriel Fernandez (MF)  CIRCLE stands for “Collaboration with Indigenous peoples to form Relational, Cyclical, and Land-based Engagement.” We like the association with the circle because we believe this engagement process is never finished and that our work happens in cycles. Our group also functions as a circle, a team. 

Discussion Question How did the members of CIRCLE meet? Why did you want to collaborate?

MF  I first met Desiree Martinez when my former boss invited members of the Tongva community and the Tongva Basketry Collective to join a studio site visit in Azusa, California, to offer their knowledge about the land's potential for basketry and the cultivation of sacred medicines. By the end of that day, she was riding in my car and I couldn't stop asking her questions. She ended up giving the students an impromptu talk that was grounded, generous, and unflinching about what Tongva elders need and why the land is sacred. From that moment, I understood that she was important to the studio as an expert voice, giving students real direction. 

But it was in the quieter conversations between us that something important kept surfacing. Desiree spoke candidly about a pattern she had witnessed repeatedly in design: Indigenous peoples invited in just long enough to give a land acknowledgment, then sidelined for everything that followed. Present at the opening moment, absent from every decision before and after.

Some of the most significant projects being realized across Los Angeles, in Long Beach, and in San Gabriel, are on land that carries centuries of Tongva memory, but were shaped without sustained Indigenous input. The acknowledgment happened, but the partnership did not. I believe this has to change. 

Indigenous voices belong, not just at the ceremony before the work begins, but at the table where the work is conceived. From inception.

Desiree Martinez (DM) I will back up a little bit. Before I came to work here at Cal Poly Pomona in 2024, I worked for a cultural resources management (CRM) firm. CRM firms are hired to identify, evaluate, and suggest management strategies for archaeological sites, historical buildings, and cultural landscapes in compliance with local, state, and federal cultural preservation laws. Over the last couple of years, I was the project manager on several CRM contracts for wetland restoration projects with state agencies. Projects included the Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles, the southern Los Cerritos Wetlands straddling Long Beach/Seal Beach, as well as other places where agencies were at the beginning stages of considering how best to restore the area. 

As the consulting archaeologist, you have to make sure that the project is not going to affect any archeological sites or impact any cultural use of the land by the tribes. I was doing travel consultation as part of my assessment during these projects. I was working for the Watershed Conservation Authority, doing a broad survey of the use of the San Gabriel Foothills by Tongva (Gabrielino), the original caretakers of the Los Angeles Basin, through time.  I conducted interviews with tribal community members and asked them, “How have you used the wetlands? How did your family use them? Do you still use them? What types of areas around the wetlands would you like to see that would be of use to the tribes?”

DM  It was a very different way of approaching restoration because usually when you're looking at restoration, the focus is on plants or animals rather than on public use. If it is considered for public use, it is usually for trails or for providing ways that the public can access the area and look at the birds, et cetera. However, the way that the Indigenous communities, particularly the Tongva, want to use wetlands is very different. It’s cultural. It’s reestablishing the reciprocal relationship with the land, as directed by the ‘Amuupavetam (First People) through plant harvesting for traditional activities, conducting ceremonies, teaching tule boat construction and use, and gathering as a community. As a result, the way that I engaged with Tribes during restoration projects, as a consulting archaeologist, was very, very different from how archaeologists typically approach these types of projects. 

When Muriel and I started talking about landscape architecture projects, we agreed that Indigenous people should be involved at the beginning, prior to the development of any design. The issue was that many people I was working with at the time hadn’t been trained on how to work with Indigenous people, and I experienced difficulty with this many times. 

In fact, one of these times occurred when we were at Fairview Park in Orange County, a well-known archaeological site where burials were found. The landscape architect asked, “Where are the burials? I wanna know where the burials are.” This was with all the tribal members there, so I had to pull him aside and tell him that it wasn’t an appropriate question—it’s considered disrespectful. 

So I’ve been wondering, how can we educate landscape professionals on cultural sensitivity and tradition? How do we educate future landscape architects and designers? Moreover, how can we bring to the forefront that, from the very beginning, tribes need to be there? How do we show how easy it is to invite tribes in to shape the design in service of the local tribal communities, the local tribe whose land you're on! At the same time, we want to demonstrate how this collaboration can serve the broader public as well. 

Dagny Elise Carlsson (DEC)  I met Desiree at an event at the Greenfield Intercultural Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where Indigenous alumni were coming to talk to Natives at Penn, the campus Indigenous student affinity group. It was actually a total stroke of luck that I happened to stop by on the night that she was visiting. Desiree was one of the founding members of Natives at Penn, and we got to talking about our experiences as students here. I described that I had attended several design-oriented discussions and academic events where speakers didn't really see Indigenous collaborators as full collaborators. At times, these Indigenous communities were described as knowledge resources, but they weren't necessarily considered constituent communities or co-designers. 

I’ve always been very interested in challenging that narrative, especially because I already knew numerous Indigenous designers, architects, and practitioners who have incredible insights and amazingly diverse practices. Honestly, incorporating Indigenous perspectives into architecture and design has often meant acknowledging fundamentally different understandings and conceptualizations of the world. 

After Desiree and I spoke at Penn, she returned to California, and we scheduled our first meeting, along with Muriel, via Zoom. Desiree suggested we work together to host a panel or organize some sort of advocacy event where we could continue this conversation publicly, and things took off from there.

Tera Johnson (TJ)  I am a recent member of CIRCLE, thanks to an invitation from Muriel. We both worked at the California Botanic Garden, although at different times, and we connected through our shared background in landscape architecture and our connection to the botanic garden. 

There's such a healing quality in working with plants every day and putting hands to the soil. I think that's why I was drawn to the garden, specifically because I think there's something fascinating about learning about native plants, as they are so inherently tied to land. I’m new to the field of landscape architecture and recognize that my knowledge is still growing, especially when I think about the millennia of wisdom that Indigenous communities hold about the land. So I’m very excited and honored to work alongside all of you. I get to ask the questions that folks like me (who don't have direct cultural ties to Indigenous peoples) need to ask in order to design well, and to do this with humility and respect.

What would you describe as the rationale behind the series? 

MF  This series was built on the conviction that genuine, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities must begin at the very inception of a project, before the site analysis, before the program, before the first concept sketch. Indigenous voices do not belong at the podium before the work starts. They belong at the table where the work is conceived. 

The deeper rationale is this: landscape architecture claims to design for communities and for the land. But you cannot design honestly for either without first entering into genuine relationships with the people who have held the deepest knowledge of that land across generations. Everything else – the ecology, the hydrology, the spatial strategies – flows from that relationship, or it doesn't hold.  This series is an attempt to build something that holds. 

DEC  In addition to discussing these relationships, I’m particularly interested in how we can showcase a variety of design and community practices in collaboration with, and within, Indigenous communities. The work highlighted in our speaker series challenges assumptions and underscores cultural differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous work. A discussion of these differences could start a dialogue about what we think of as standard or “given.” 

Indigenous design practice, though diverse across our continent—and indeed, many places further afield—is commonly, if not always, rooted in community. It’s rooted in relationship building, even when the process is profoundly difficult. 

One might assume that the series would only focus on Indigenous cosmologies and symbolism or materiality within design, or typical design work within Indigenous communities. Sure, those things are all part of it, but for me, the less acknowledged side of Indigenous design practice is often the beginning: the engagement and programming processes. So even beyond the design work, I wanted to discuss the values we bring to our design practices and how they can change the work from the very start. This has been a major theme across many of our panels, and it’s my favorite part. We want to highlight the mutual benefits of sharing traditional ecological knowledge, but also methods for thoughtful community engagement, relationship building, and relational practice. 

Discussion Question: Why did CIRCLE choose to host a virtual series? Why this particular format? 

DM: When we talk about academia, symposiums, and conferences, those are places that Indigenous community members sometimes can't attend because they don't have the funds. Other factors, such as distance, make it really hard for them to participate. When we began planning this series, we wanted to be as inclusive and expansive as we could, and allow as many people as possible to talk and think about these presentations. We also wanted to include elders and community leaders who, as I said, might not typically be able to participate. 

Changing the series into an online webinar series is a nod to making it more accessible, and this upholds our values. It’s good to be able to have this be more available to people across the country, and in some instances, across the world. I have friends in Australia and New Zealand who said that they registered!

Discussion Question What conversations are you interested in starting within academia? 

MF  I want people to discuss how to cultivate relationships. One of the things I encountered in academia was a profound sense of disconnection from my colleagues. The interactions we had rarely created space for the perspectives I was bringing, and finding a shared voice felt not just time-consuming, but at times impossible. As someone navigating predominantly white academic and professional spaces, I have long understood what is rarely spoken aloud: that the burden of building cross-cultural understanding falls disproportionately on those of us from marginalized communities. In landscape architecture, this tension is especially visible. The discipline has historically extracted from Indigenous knowledge systems, drawing on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, relational understandings of land, and place-based ecological principles, without meaningfully including Indigenous peoples in the design process from the earliest conceptual stages. 

What I found difficult to articulate to my colleagues was not a lack of willingness, but a deep frustration with the pace and structure of institutional engagement. The time required to build authentic, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities is not inefficiency, it is integrity. It is the foundation upon which truly holistic design must be built. Yet academic culture persistently frames this relational labor as a slow-down rather than a cornerstone. 

And yet, what became clear to me over time was that cultivating these relationships could not be contained within institutional hours or professional frameworks. The work of genuine connection of showing up consistently, of listening before speaking, of earning trust rather than assuming access, demanded something more personal. It required my own time. 

But I want to be clear: that investment has been among the most profoundly meaningful of my professional life. When I shifted my orientation away from project deliverables and toward the depth of human relationship, everything changed. These are not simply community stakeholders or consultation checkboxes. These are human beings, knowledge bearers, land stewards, and storytellers with whom I have the genuine privilege of working alongside. That distinction matters enormously, and it has reshaped how I understand my own role within this discipline. 

TJ  On the point of people saying it's “too difficult” to build relationships—the idea of it being difficult is so baffling to me, because what part of this is supposed to be effortless? That sentiment makes me feel that design needs a mind shift in terms of how we approach projects. 

I think school provides lots of practical tools for contemporary design, like systems-thinking, representation skills, mapping, and understanding frameworks for things like planning. These are rigorous ways of knowing the land, but they don’t always tell the whole story. I tended to feel most disconnected from classes in which landscapes were framed as problems to be solved or analyzed. On the other hand, my favorite classes challenged those conventional practices and made space for ambiguity alongside technique. 

I’d love to see more conversations with Indigenous communities that help us see the land not just as a site, but as a living relationship. How can we step back and develop our relational understanding of place? Where does landscape design fit within this context?

DEC I totally agree with this point. You all know that I am currently working on a research project that focuses on the National Museum of the American Indian and the architectural programming process, including the Smithsonian’s consultations with Indigenous communities across the continent. What I find remarkable is that this was the first time that the Smithsonian had ever really asked a community what they wanted from a museum. 

Rick West, the first director of the National Museum of the American Indian, really pushed back and said, “We can't just design a building. We need to talk about it first.” He thought it would take years to talk about what Indigenous communities were looking for, but that the process couldn’t be rushed because it was based on consensus and genuine feedback. Here, Indigenous peoples were actually seen as the constituent community for the project, for perhaps the first time. I feel that stories like this one, especially ones that are rarely told, really challenge our existing methodologies and conceptions of design for communities. 

Discussion Question  Which part of the work of CIRCLE feels the most meaningful so far? What does this project say about the CIRCLE goals?

DM  The answer is actually how we organize ourselves. It’s an Indigenous way of organizing. Even though we are all in different academic roles – Dagny is a graduate student, Muriel is a faculty member, and I'm a staff member – we don't treat each other as such. Other than that we want Dagny to graduate, so we're gonna encourage her to focus on that! But when we're making decisions about the programming, such as whom to invite and how to plan the event, that's a consensus decision. That's also the decision process in a lot of Indigenous communities. 

Consensus decision making is very different from processes where the majority rules. It has meant that we try to accommodate each other in meetings, pick times when every single member is present, and talk until we are all on the same page. This process is reflected in the final project. It’s very ambitious. 

MF  Perhaps what has moved me most deeply are the conversations held within CIRCLE. There is something irreplaceable about a space where you are not translating yourself or carrying the exhausting weight of being the only one who sees the land, and the people connected to it, as living and relational. These conversations have reminded me that community is not peripheral to this work. It is the work. We sustain each other so that something larger than any one of us can come into being. 

There is a quality I find breathtaking in oak woodland ecosystems that I return to often as both metaphor and truth. Oaks will not allow a neighboring tree to remain indefinitely in the shadow. They shift, they reach in another direction, so that those beside them can also grow toward the sun. That is the spirit I have felt in genuine communal collaboration. We don’t diminish one another to rise; rather, we allow each other to shine, and in doing so, we create something that no single canopy could shelter alone. 

DEC I think that the members of CIRCLE couldn't have done this project alone. I think the idea would have been too ambitious. I’ve concluded that our collaboration, our interest in working together, has had enormous bearing on our process and scope. Fundamentally, doing this hybrid project at two locations has meant that we can expand our reach across the continent and even globally. I mean, I know that folks were calling in from South Africa to hear the talks—I think our ambition for this project was to make it a global conversation. I do believe that there's something special about us having conversations together across vast distances. Offline, after each talk, we get to connect with our local communities in person, to unpack conversations and to discuss in community. This has ended up being a global conversation with local impact.

Discussion Question: What does CIRCLE hope people take away from these discussions? 

DM I want to activate our audience to do something for the land and to do something for the Indigenous people whose land they are on.

Earlier, I mentioned that I was just listening to the repatriation conference that the Association on American Indian Affairs was hosting; one of the talks was about how the University of Michigan repatriated seeds back to the Haudenosaunee, and they discussed how they used those heirloom seeds to create a garden for the tribes. This makes us ask: “What can universities do to be of service to the local tribes?”

There are multiple ways that that can happen, whether by teaching their architecture and landscape architecture students about how best to work with Indigenous communities, discussing best practices, talking about how to build relationships with people, or even looking at the types of resources that a university has—-such as seeds—-and how to then give those resources to the community. 

Something that Muriel has tried to do at Cal Poly Pomona is create a plant nursery that the local tribes use as a resource for restoration projects across Tongvaland—in this instance, for the Tongva—so that people can use the plants to create places for gathering that are meaningful and close to them. 

I would also suggest thinking of small ways to help. Not everything has to be big. Just do one or two simple things that you can do as a person, as a human being, to help another human being continue to practice their cultural traditions. 

MF More than anything, I want people to truly engage with this conversation. For far too long, Indigenous knowledge systems have been dismissed as unscientific. In reality, Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a scientific method. Between this and Western science, neither is greater, and neither fully exists without the other. The land stewardship, ancestral kinship, and intergenerational knowledge that Indigenous peoples carry is not supplementary to our ecological future – it is foundational. Foundational to the health of our ecosystems, and to the world we hope to leave our children.

My deepest hope is that forums like this move beyond gesture, and that Indigenous voices are included as first authors in research papers and not as tokens or mandated check-boxes. Because we genuinely recognize the depth of what they offer, and the magnitude of what has been lost by excluding them. 

And please: be patient, and be humble. 

Imagine having your identity, your land, and your belongings stripped away, and then being asked to trust again. That task carries weight that cannot be rushed. Give people space. Give people time. Let relationships grow at the pace that trust requires. 

That patience is not a courtesy. It is the very least we owe. 

DEC I hope people feel empowered to begin these sorts of collaborations and engage with these topics within their own practices. I'm hoping that some of these discussions and presentations can show that putting in the time, work, and patience to build relationships can lead to fulfilling work, fulfilling practice, and lots of learning.

TJ I hope folks walk away with a better understanding of how to be in relationship with each other and with the land. We are never designing on a blank slate, and there are so many layers of memory, history, and culture embedded in the landscape. Realizing this changes how we see ourselves as designers, and also changes the types of questions we ask and our approaches to relationship building. I’m really looking forward to learning more from our speakers, and seeing examples of what this looks like in practice.

Recordings of “Designing For, By, and With: Indigenous Voices of the Land” will be available on Cal Poly Pomona’s Tribal Relations website. 

This interview was conducted for Perspectives 02 and has been edited and condensed for clarity.