2025 | Three Sisters, Many Worlds
Architecture as a Living Collaboration

Ulrike Heine | Andreea Mihalache | Brandon Pass

Introduction

In 2023, approximately 8.8 million people in the United States identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, representing 2.7% of the nation’s population. These numbers describe a population that is both contemporary and deeply rooted in histories that precede the United States. While AI/AN people born within the territory claimed by the United States are American citizens, they are also citizens of their own Native nations—nations with distinct histories, governments, cultures, and continuing claims to sovereignty. There are 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages. Their communities are not defined by a single geography or experience. Eighty-seven percent of Native people live in urban areas, while the remaining 13% live on reservations or tribal lands. Some tribal communities are economically prosperous; others face severe poverty, unemployment rates two or three times the national average, significant housing shortages, and long waitlists for assistance. On some reservations, as many as 60% of homes are considered substandard. California has the largest Native population of any state, while New York City is home to the largest Native population of any city. States such as Alaska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Montana have among the highest concentrations of Native residents. These conditions are inseparable from questions of land, infrastructure, governance, and access. Oil pipelines threaten sacred lands and water sources. Native students frequently attend underfunded schools and graduate from high school or attend college at lower rates than national averages. Native communities experience higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, mental health challenges, and addiction, while access to healthcare remains limited and the Indian Health Service continues to be underfunded. AI/AN people also have the lowest life expectancy among racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Native women are murdered or go missing at disproportionately high rates, and too many cases remain unsolved.

For a graduate design studio, these realities demand more than visual interpretation or formal invention. They ask us to consider how design participates in systems of power: who controls land, who receives investment, whose knowledge is recognized, and whose safety is treated as essential. They also require humility. Design cannot stand in for Native leadership, cultural knowledge, or political sovereignty. It must instead learn to listen, to situate itself within specific communities and histories, and to recognize when its role is to support rather than to speak. This documentation records an effort to engage those questions through design. It acknowledges the pressures facing Native communities while also recognizing their strength and ongoing work. Elders are passing on knowledge even as language revitalization efforts seek to preserve and renew Indigenous languages. Tribes and communities are reviving ceremonies, traditions, and relationships to place. Movements such as Land Back and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women are raising urgent questions of rights, accountability, and justice. The projects that follow should therefore be understood not as solutions to a singular problem, but as acts of inquiry. They explore how design might contribute to repair, visibility, and self-determination while remaining accountable to the people and places represented. In doing so, the studio asks what it means to design with greater care—and how the built environment might help make sovereignty, memory, belonging, and justice more tangible.

THE PROJECT

“The city made us new, and we made it ours.” Tommy Orange, There There

The “three sisters” is a planting method traditionally used by Indigenous American Indians that involved cultivating corn, beans, and squash together, with each crop benefiting the others. Symbolically, we extrapolated this system to networks of mutual collaboration, intersectionality, and interdependence that allowed each part to develop individually while contributing to the growth of the whole. Examples included health–education–agriculture, art–therapy–mental health, water–health–agriculture, and storytelling–history–identity.

The main objective of the studio was to imagine architectural strategies that celebrated and interpreted the heritage of specific AI/AN nations in the contemporary world without stereotyping or essentializing their identities and cultures. The goal was not to solve the problems faced by AI/AN nations or to offer one-size-fits-all solutions to the broad range of issues confronting diverse AI/AN communities, but rather to advance hypotheses of growth anchored in an understanding of the past, the reality of the present, and the challenges of the future. We asked students to design a community for 50–100 inhabitants from a specific AI/AN group that comprised, at a minimum, spaces for living, production, and leisure. Addressing the reality of climate change and environmental threats was a major concern of the studio. Each team defined its specific programmatic elements based on the geographical, social, cultural, historical, and environmental conditions of its chosen location. We invited students to explore a variety of urban, suburban, and rural settings where environmental, social, and cultural challenges required alternatives to conventional approaches to housing, energy, and food resources. We prompted students to go beyond predictable generalizations and romanticized views of the past and instead try to understand the minutiae of a place and a small community. We encouraged them to avoid simplistic polarizations—for example, “natural is good, urban is bad” or “the past is good, the present is corrupt”—and to embrace the contradictions and intricacies of modern conditions. Considering the locale, for instance, the strategy of moving AI/AN people from reservations into cities was part of government efforts to ensure their erasure. Native groups, however, did not allow their cultures to be deleted and instead began a process of reinvention. This process forged exchanges between them and their home cities and prompted the development of complex identities. Unlike what Western audiences might commonly have believed, Native people’s ideas about identity and authenticity were not inextricably connected to an idealized premodern natural world. In the 2018 novel There There, Tommy Orange, himself a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, raised questions about the nature of modern urban Native identity and the trauma of history. He said in an interview that his characters were “trying to be Native as they are, and not as something removed from them.” Thus, “Indianness” could not be about returning to something that had never been left. As Orange wrote, “Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.” The studio operated within the AIA Framework for Design Excellence, which provided 10 overarching principles seeking to “inform progress toward a zero-carbon, equitable, resilient, and healthy built environment” through design for integration, water, resources, equitable communities, economy, change, energy, ecosystems, well-being, and discovery.

SITES

SITE 1: NAPA VALLEY, CA [Sonoma County / Santa Rosa, CA, USA]
Climate: hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters
Environmental Challenges: wildfires / flooding / storms​
Site: urban
Client: seasonal workers [Latin] / native American from the Pomo, Wappo, and Coast Miwok tribe

Native Americans in California’s Wine Industry: Labor, Land, and Challenges

Native Americans have a long but often overlooked history in California’s wine industry. Indigenous peoples were among the first laborers in California vineyards during the Spanish mission period, when they were forced to plant and tend grapes under colonial rule. Today, while the majority of vineyard workers are Latino, some Native Americans—especially from tribes native to wine-producing regions—continue to work in viticulture, though they remain underrepresented and face significant social, economic, and environmental challenges. Native workers are mostly found in northern California counties such as Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake—homelands of tribes like the Pomo, Wappo, and Coast Miwok. These regions have become globally known for wine, but few Indigenous people have gained ownership or leadership roles in the industry. Some work seasonally in vineyard maintenance or harvesting, while others may be involved in land stewardship or conservation efforts near winery land. Many Native workers live in rural or low-income areas, often in overcrowded or unstable housing due to the high cost of living. They may face barriers to stable employment, education, healthcare, and transportation—conditions that reflect broader systemic inequalities. For Native individuals living off-reservation or disconnected from tribal networks, access to support services can be especially limited. Culturally, Native communities in wine country face erasure. Tourism and wine marketing rarely acknowledge the original stewards of the land. In some cases, vineyards and wineries have been built on or near ancestral territories and sacred sites, compounding historical trauma.

Environmental threats are also a major concern. Vineyard expansion and industrial agriculture have led to water overuse, pesticide exposure, and habitat loss—issues that directly affect Indigenous people who live and work in these areas. In recent years, wildfires—intensified by climate change and poor land management—have added to the dangers faced by rural Native communities. Today, Native Americans working in or living near wine-producing areas continue to advocate for land recognition, labor rights, and environmental justice. Their presence—while small—is part of a deeper effort to reclaim both visibility and agency in a landscape their ancestors helped shape. Napa Valley faces several significant environmental threats, primarily driven by the expansion of the wine industry and climate change. Deforestation and habitat loss occur as vineyards replace native oak woodlands, reducing biodiversity and disrupting local ecosystems. Water overuse is a critical concern, as grape cultivation demands large amounts of irrigation in a region already prone to drought. Additionally, the widespread use of pesticides and fertilizers can contaminate soil and waterways, affecting both wildlife and human health. The region is also increasingly vulnerable to wildfires, which have intensified due to rising temperatures, dry conditions, and land mismanagement. These environmental pressures not only endanger the natural landscape but also threaten the long-term sustainability of wine production in Napa Valley.