MIT announced that it is “reorienting the planning profession to more meaningfully support the goals and practices of Indigenous sovereignty movements.” The key is learning how to “respect Indigenous epistemologies, kinships, and stewardship.” This is apparently important when doing things like delivering electricity to remote and marginalized communities.

Western colonial methods of assessing energy projects will no longer suffice. Instead, a “Feminist Energy Systems framework incorporating place-based values and feminist approaches” will direct the planning process.

MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) recently reported on a project to help the Kānaka Maoli people replace the oppressive providers of electricity to their rural Hawaiian Island.

Using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) process community members were brought together with university students to “create an ethical space where varied and even contrasting worldviews could meet through authenticity and deep human-to-human dialogue. Feminist methodology also values multiple forms of knowledge, such as truth found through emotions or art, which has often been left out of traditional research methods.”

The project organizers admitted that their effort was hampered by a lack of know-how since none of the participants had ever built or run a power plant, nor had a clue on how to finance such an endeavor. But it was nonetheless considered enough of a success to publish the results, even though not a single kilowatt-hour of electricity was genderated. Why? Because it advanced the “understanding of the nexus of intersecting systems of local economies, natural resource management, public and ecological health, cultural identity and practices, social equity, and technological progress.”

If you think the Beaver made up a single word of this or it is some kind of Sokal Hoax and you want to understand what DEI is doing to STEM education, you are invited to read the recently published paper here.

Listen carefully and you will hear William Barton Rogers turning over in his grave.