Intersections of community, traditional knowledge, and place: a park design for the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians

The Luiseño people have utilized Southern California’s landscape to support their way of life for thousands of years. Their identity is a product of their relationship with this land and is reflected in their culture and traditional practices. Today for the Luiseño people, this relationship between land and culture is dissolving. This is especially true for the La Jolla Band of the Luiseño Indians. Recent shifts in both landscape and lifestyle threaten the persistence of La Jolla community’s unique knowledge, traditional practices, and native language. The central challenge for this thesis is to examine ways in which the landscape can be designed to convey La Jolla cultural practices and provide a means for transmitting traditional knowledge. I have engaged with La Jolla tribal members, the La Jolla Environmental Protection Office, the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, and University of Illinois faculty and peers to design a park for the La Jolla community that provides considerably more than the typical recreation activities we so often associate with a park. To guide my design process, I synthesized the criteria for success, identified by each of the project partners, and determined that to be successful the landscape must honor the past, acknowledge the present, and accommodate the future. Using a participatory process, I was able to provide design recommendations for an engaging and educational park landscape that integrates cultural gardens, community gardens, and recreational space into a contemporary context.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.L.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Stout, Nathan F.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sullivan, William C.

• Park Design
• Native American
• Indian
• Community
• Garden
• Park
• Design
• Luiseño
• Traditional Knowledge
• Native Foods
• Traditional Foods

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2011 Nathan F. Stout

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/26158

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/26158