Notes on designer positionality and Indigenous collaborations in a warming Arctic
Irina V. Wang
Integrating multi-stakeholder approaches is increasingly necessary to address global systemic issues, and the professional position of many designers has shifted from producer to facilitator in response. Facilitation-heavy frameworks of co-design and participatory design attempt to democratise design by involving community stakeholders in the process of problem-finding and creative response—yet the risk of performative collaboration can quickly perpetuate systemic inequality rather than mitigate it.
I argue for a co-creative philosophy built upon deference rather than facilitation, recognising that delegating power is not the same as seeking to rebalance it. Designers tout the importance of “trust-building” in a co-creative process, but what does it functionally require? Ambient time and sustained proximity are two such building blocks, laying a foundation upon which deference can begin to demonstrate trustworthiness and establish shared context. These are all crucial prerequisites for fostering the multilateral agency implied by the term “co-design” but rarely achieved in practice—including, but not limited to, collaborations between non-Indigenous designers and Indigenous stakeholders.
Throughout the presentation, these claims and insights will be illustrated by specific fieldwork anecdotes and auto-ethnographical observations from a period of design research concerning Sámi reindeer herders’ perspectives on climate change across Sápmi and in the Finnish Arctic. Recommendations for integrating ethically critical co-design practices apply to individual designers but especially to research funding structures and project reporting metrics that may unintentionally incentivise an extractive approach to community stakeholder collaboration.
KEYWORDS: design ethics, decolonial design, indigenous collaboration, co-design, deference, positionality, time, proximity, agency, trust-building, funding structures
RSD TOPIC(S): Cases & Practice, Methods & Methodology