I. Team Research Paper

You will work with your team to:
(1) Choose an Indian community and identify a current tribal planning or community development problem, issue or challenge in that area. Indian nations may include urban or reservation Indian communities in the US or First Nations communities in Canada.

(2) Research the Indian community, its people, governance, history, culture and development. Identify resources to inform your project.

(3) Come up with a set of realistic and practical recommendations to address the problem, issue or challenge that you identified. Your recommendations should reflect disciplinary knowledge and expertise from both American Indian Studies and Planning.

(4) Prepare a professional presentation that describes your work.
You are encouraged to look to invited speakers as resources for the project.
The project deliverable is a 10-page group paper (double-spaced). Submit your paper to Blackboard. The cover page and notes or bibliography should not be counted as part of your 10 pages. All team members must contribute. Your paper should include:
• Background of the Indian community (imagine the class has never heard of or visited this Indian community, what do they need to know about the local culture and history?)
• Description of the problem, issue or challenge (who, what, why, when, where and how.) Make a case for why your research question and findings matter.
• Your solution or recommendation for the Indian community (provide support, evidence, analysis and/or case studies for your proposed solutions.) Sum up recommended policy action or community decision-making, based on your research.
The paper should reflect an interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving. Perspectives and analysis from both AIS and Planning or Design should be evident in your work. Points will be deducted if the teaching team does not see clear evidence of contributions and perspectives provided by all disciplines represented on your team. In other words, if your paper is all AIS with no discernible language, applications or analysis from planning you will lose points.
You are encouraged to take feedback from your November 29 in-class presentation into consideration as you prepare the paper for final submission the end of the semester. Questions or suggestions from the review panel may help to clarify key points or fine-tune your recommendations.

II. Team Presentation

Student teams will provide a professional presentation of their research to the class and invited experts from the community. These experts may include individuals who visited our class as guest presenters, ASU faculty, planning practitioners and/or tribal community members.
A professional presentation is one that showcases the innovation and collaboration of the multi-disciplinary team. Again, perspectives and analysis from both AIS and Planning should be evident in your work. Each student must have a speaking part.
Each team will have 20-25 minutes, be sure to allow time for Q&A. To ensure that all teams have their allotted time, you will not be allowed to speak for more than 25 minutes.