After many years of working with Indigenous communities and designers, I came to understand this knowledge is relational and shaped by time and place. Its different from Western science; Indigenous knowledge is interconnected, said Julia Watson, Author of LoTEK Design by Radical Indigenism, during the opening general session of the ASLA 2024 Conference on Landscape Architecture in Washington, D.C. There are vast networks of knowledge developed over long periods of time. These networks of knowledge enabled ancestral people to survive and adapt to climate change over thousands of years. You cant separate their technologies from the people; they are co-evolutionary. During the session, Watson was joined by Lyla June Johnston, an Indigenous Artist, Musician, Scholar, and Community Organizer of Din (Navajo), Tstshsthese (Cheyenne), and European lineages. And then in conversation with Jose de Jesus Leal, ASLA, and Paul Fragua with MIG. Together with ASLA and the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD), they launched a historic call to action: Co-create a future that heals land and water. Read more in ASLA's THE DIRT: https://bit.ly/4hYpKZEImage Credit: Aech Fish Weirs of the Yap People of Micronesia / Bill Jeffrey, courtesy of Julia Watson. A young fisherman walks under a living root bridge at Mawlynnong village, India. In the relentless damp of Meghalayas jungles the Khasi people have used the trainable roots of rubber trees to grow Jingkieng Dieng Jri living root bridges over rivers for centuries. / Amos Chapple, courtesy of Julia Watson; Symbiocene exhibition / Tim P. Whitby, courtesy of Julia Watson; Clam garden in the Broughton Archipelago, British Columbia, Canada / Wikipedia, Simon Fraser University, CC BY 2.0