How can municipal planning processes work in alignment with Indigenous cycles?
(Adapted from the Final Report’s Executive Summary, co-authored by Ange Loft and Helen Yung.)
To move beyond land acknowledgements, municipal planning processes need to honour the land and water needs of Indigenous people, particularly those with historical relationships to the area. For Indigenous people, culture, language, traditions, and indeed their identity, well-being, and worldviews are rooted in the land. To be separated from the land is to be severed from one’s relations, and from one’s self. In April 2025, Ange Loft began working with municipal staff and Indigenous community groups to look at how to align the City of Toronto’s planning cycles with Indigenous community cycles of activities.
Hosted by the City’s Interdivisional Placekeeping Team, the Cycles process connected pockets of information and memories, implicit and informal knowledge held by specific individuals, siloed in specific divisions, and/or residing with various community groups. The resulting analysis suggests powerful ways that the City of Toronto can meaningfully plan in good relations with the traditional caretakers of this land who have resided here since time immemorial.
The Final Report calls for the City to support the flourishing of Indigenous people and promote the continuity of Indigenous cultural traditions and practices on land and water. Key recommendations include:
- Ensuring that Indigenous people have permanent, no-cost, low-barrier access to land, water, and fire spaces to support cultural practices; protecting Indigenous cultural and land stewardship practices from destruction and hate crimes;
- Supporting Indigenous practices with simple no-cost resources such as municipal space for Indigenous seed starting and volunteers for public events;
- Establishing a routine presence at seasonal Indigenous-led public gatherings to promote Indigenous awareness of the above efforts, and to identify and engage Indigenous people who can give input and advise on the City’s planning of publicly visible Indigenous arts, culture and languages.
- Expanding consultation to include more Indigenous Nations with historical relationships to these lands and waters;
- An annual or bi-annual Land Stewardship Assembly for regular, continuous knowledge-exchange and relationship-building between City staff and Indigenous community groups leading cultural practices on land and water.
Background
This Cycles consultation and planning process was the outcome of a series of meetings with Jennifer LaFontaine regarding the City of Toronto’s Interdivisional Indigenous Placekeeping (IIP) Team. Placekeeping goes beyond design and urban planning of public space. Placekeeping is about the active care and annual activities that maintain these spaces – physically, relationally, culturally. Indigenous Placekeeping efforts at the City involve a variety of divisions, and include important elements such as access to land and waters, land stewardship, and the visibility of Indigenous art, culture and languages. This all contributes to a sense of belonging and support for the well-being for Toronto’s diverse Indigenous community.
As the City’s new endeavours unfold, countless configurations of Indigenous people will be assembled toward advisories, councils, and representative committees on naming projects, land processes, narrative-making and placekeeping initiatives. This report helps articulate a coherent strategy to advance and support Indigenous Placekeeping.
An established artist-researcher with in-depth experience working with Indigenous community groups and City staff, Ange Loft was engaged as Lead Consultant to bring Cycles, a unique, creative Indigenous planning process grounded in the Kanien’kehá:ka Cycle of Ceremonies, created by Ange in collaboration with the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence. The Cycles process aimed to consolidate eclectic information held individually by City staff, and within specific offices; surface information that the Interdivisional team does not yet have in its memory; increase cross-divisional awareness and informal dialogue between City teams; and to strategically consider intersectional Indigenous moments for cross-promotion, relationship building, outreach, etc.
The process was also guided by research questions that seek to address what can be put in place now to create the vision of a place we would like to support in, say, three years. Additionally, how do we ensure good and ongoing inter-relations with Indigenous people and activity across the City as a place (the land) and as a municipal entity or Treaty holder?
