Heather Dorries

Position:

Assistant Professor, Centre for Indigenous Studies & Department of Geography and Planning

Research Interests:

Indigenous planning, Indigeneity and urbanism, Indigenous knowledge systems

Publications:

Publications

Dorries, H., & Harjo, L. 2020. “Beyond Safety: Refusing Colonial Violence Through Indigenous Feminist Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 40(2), 210-219.

Dorries, H., Hugill, D. and J. Tomiak. 2019. “Racial Capitalism and the Settler Colonial Relation: Notes from Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Geoforum.

Dorries, H. 2019. “Welcome to Winnipeg: Making Settler-Colonial Urban Space in ‘Canada’s Most Racist City’” In Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Tomiak, J., McCreary, T., Hugill D., Henry, B., and H. Dorries. “Settler City Limits.” In Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Trapenberg Frick, K., Myers, D., Inch, A., and H. Dorries, H., Manning-Thomas, J., Lung-Amam, W., Sandoval, G. and A. Foss. 2018. “Planning Interface: Strengthening Planning’s Effectiveness in a Hyper-Polarized World/Responding to the Conservative Common Sense of Opposition to Planning and Development in England/The Limits to Negotiation and the Promise of Refusal/Planning Contexts in a Hyper-Polarized World/A Right to Sanctuary: Supporting Immigrant Communities in an Era of Extreme Precarity/Planning and Climate Change: Opportunities and Challenges in a Politically Contested Environment/Speaking with the Middle 40% to Bridge the Political Divide for Mutual Gains in Planning Agreements.” Planning Theory & Practice, 19 (4), 581-615.

Dorries, H. and S. Ruddick. 2018. “Between Concept and Context: Reading Gilles Deleuze and Leanne Simpson in their In/commensurabilities.” Cultural Geographies, 25(4), 619-635.

Dorries, H. 2017. Planning as Property: Uncovering the Hidden Racial Logic of a Municipal Nuisance By-law, Canadian Journal of Law and Social Policy, 27 (2017), 80-102.

Biography:

Heather Dorries is of Anishinaabe and settler ancestry and a member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Treaty 1. She is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed to the Department of Geography and Planning and Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the relationship between urban planning and settler colonialism and examines how Indigenous intellectual traditions—including Indigenous environmental knowledge, legal orders, and cultural production—can serve as the foundation for justice-oriented approaches to planning.

She is currently revising her book manuscript Planning the End of the World: Indigenist Planning Theory and the Art of Refusal, which demonstrates how Indigenous knowledge systems can inform resurgent forms of planning and urbanism. She is a co-editor of the collection Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Settler Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West (University of Manitoba Press, 2019).

INS Courses

INS 390 Research and Methods in Indigenous Studies

JIG 322 Indigenous Worlds, Wordlviews, and the Environment