Nalini Naidoo, a longtime Yellowknifer and the city’s director of planning and development, is bound for the East Coast.
Naidoo's last day is Jan. 29. She has previously served the city as director of communications and economic development and as manager of planning and lands.
She described her role in planning her hometown as a longtime “dream come true.”
“I am a Yellowknifer,” Naidoo stated in an email. “I have a full amazing life here with family, friends and work. My love for municipal government has grown with every year and every position I have held with the City of Yellowknife.”
According to Naidoo, “nothing is achieved alone in our line of work,” but she did recall some highlights from her career in public service.
That list includes integrating social media posting into the city's communications strategy; lobbying the Northwest Territories government for more authority on tourism and energy retrofits, and updating building energy efficiency rules to exceed the National Building Code.
“A lot of people, community groups and staff helps make any idea a reality; none of us do it by ourselves,” she stated.
Wishing Naidoo well, Mayor Rebecca Alty pointed to the large amount of work on planning and lands over the last year, particularly with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation boundary change.
“It’s always bittersweet. We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” Alty said. “But she’ll definitely be missed here in the city.”
Naidoo is a Sir John Franklin High School graduate; her family has called Yellowknife home since the 1970s. She was introduced to Halifax shortly after high school as an undergraduate student at Dalhousie University.
“When a Halifax opportunity aligned with career planning our family decided we were ready for the adventure,” she stated.
She encouraged whoever takes her place to consider reconciliation’s impact on the role, explaining it “will push land use planners to undo the work of the past.”
She pointed to one quote that she would specifically leave.
It’s from a scholarly text: Reclaiming Indigenous Planning by Ryan Walker, David Natcher and Ted Jojola, who stated planning has often been complicit with colonialism, provided the tools “to facilitate the scorched earth clearance of Indigenous people.”
According to the authors, city planners have a responsibility to confront this complexity and assist in the recovery and re-inclusion of Indigenous communities in “‘shared’ though nonetheless misappropriated space.”
She also offered her successor the same advice she received when becoming manager of planning and lands.
“They didn’t hire you to do it the way I did it. Your job is to read everything, know everything you can, learn the city, every document, and weave that into all your planning recommendations,” she stated.
