ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the example of Navajo Nation, a Native American Indigenous group that is actively working on reversing decades of abject poverty through collaborative planning processes that inform sustainable development plans that make a positive and respectful contribution to tourism development. It discusses the socio-political structural conditions that have thwarted community development for many decades. Located in the southwest part of the United States in the state of Arizona, Navajo Nation is home to the majority of the Navajo tribe. According to Gunn all planning related to tourism and economic development has to include collaboration with a variety of related organizations in order to be successful. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is relevant to collaborative planning because of the premise that all research pivots on the relationship between research partners and collectively identified objectives for social transformation.
