Where Generalized Equitable Design Practice Meet Specific Indigenous Communities

There are many approaches to design frameworks that guide designers through co-designing with Indigenous communities. Designers that want to be respectful to the Indigenous communities look towards these equitable design approaches to ensure they are not perpetuating histories of harm. However, some of these approaches are prescriptive to a generalized “Indigenous community." Through these guidelines designers often develop a practice through their own interpretations of what is equitable for this learned idea of a generalized Indigenous community. This can be limiting, as what are respectful practices to an Indigenous community can be vastly different. This paper engages with these generalized guidelines of co-design to present and discuss a method of developing customized practice to collaborate with specific Indigenous communities. We showcase the framework with our experience of developing a design practice for the Office of Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation’s work with the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) community.