The Native Land Project began in 2015 as a Canadian not-for-profit organisation. In December 2018 the project began in earnest, and now has began a project of 'counter-mapping' to represent indigenous history. It is an unfortunate part of history that indigenous peoples across the world have had their lives and lands taken away from them by colonial forces. Native Land aims to represent indigenous land claims, treaties, and languages on an interactive map, and it is continuously expanding. As it was originally associated with the Indigenous Board of Directors in Canada the project is Canada-centric, but it has expanded to include the rest of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. So far the project has only focused on the Americas and Oceania, and certain areas are still not represented - Brazil and Nicaragua for example - but the project is still expanding.
What is Counter-Mapping?
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| A Gall-Peters Map |
Maps are not value-free objects - they are all made for specific reasons. As argued by J.B. Harley, 'maps are a cultural text' where maps are intrinsically linked to power. Benedict Anderson linked maps to the formation of national identity; by demarcating where the borders lay it was used by national rulers to build a national community. By delineating who belongs within the border helped create the nation. Counter-mapping aims to put the this on its head, and look at maps through alternate lenses. These 'counter-maps' can vary immensely based on purpose and usage. A good example is the use of a Gall-Peters map instead of a Mercator map. If you look at a map in North America or Europe it will likely use the Mercator scale - it was designed in the sixteenth century to allow sailors navigate their way to the Americas from Europe. This meant that certain areas, especially Europe and Greenland, were made much larger, and other areas, like Africa and India, were shrunk. Due to the legacy of colonialism, the Mercator scale reinforces European importance. In contrast, the Gall-Peters map changes the scale in a different way to more accurately represent the size, and even place, where continents lie. Although not perfect, there is distortion in any global map, it makes the map appear more as does in reality.
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| Decolonial Atlas' map of Australia from an indigenous point of view |
That is just one example of a counter-map. Denis Wood has shown how varied counter-maps can be. The 1971 Detroit Geographic Expedition first mapped where children were killed in hit-and-run accidents, where the white population is, and then transposed both maps over one another. It showed how white motorists travelling between the white suburbs and white business sector hit African-American children - it showed the an indirect racial series of murders. The Decolonial Atlas shows a different version of counter-mapping - this website shows a variety of maps ranging from the US written in indigenous names to bio-regions of Africa. Native Land is a good example of counter-mapping.
The Native Land Project
A board of indigenous activists, historians, and cartographers run the Native Land Project with the aim to bring awareness of indigenous land claims. They themselves acknowledge that it is far from perfect - they argue that it is incomplete and the legacies of colonialism mean that land claims cannot be fully traced. However, it is doing an important job in recognising indigenous history. As contributor Chelsea Vowel, a Metis woman, stated:
If we think of territorial acknowledgments as sites of potential disruption, they can be transformative acts that to some extent undo Indigenous erasure. I believe this is true as long as these acknowledgments discomfit both those speaking and hearing the words. The fact of Indigenous presence should force non-Indigenous peoples to confront their own place on these lands.
They aim to make settlers recognise that there were people who lived on the lands before them - genocide and exploitation forced indigenous peoples from these lands. In contrast to the Canadian government, the Native Land Project expands whose claims to look at - they acknowledge Inuit and Metis claims as well as the First Nations. The map contains no borders to reflect that contemporary borders do not reflect where territories and languages were. For example, the Blackfoot territory was split in half by the creation of the US-Cananda border where Montana and Saskatchewan now are. The languages, territories, and treaties on the map show where peoples and land claims are, and the map supply links to websites made by indigenous activists to inform readers. Looking at the map you get a strong sense of just how diverse and overlapping indigenous peoples are in just small areas. Below is a language map of California perfectly showing this:
It can be usefully compared to other counter-mapping projects. For example, below is the Native Land Project's territory map of Australia showing a similar map as the one shown above.
The map is still in development - as mentioned earlier there are still many areas of the world which need filling in. Brazil, Nicaragua, and Brazil have no treaties, territories, and languages, and the rest of the world needs to be filled in. The Saami of Scandinavia; Tatars of Central Asia and Ukraine; the various peoples of Papua New Guinea, China, and Vietnam; the Khoisan of South Africa; and Ainu and Okinawans of Japan are just some people not included. However, the creators emphasise that it is not complete and not perfect - especially in Australia a wide range of territories overlap so a readable map would be difficult to do. Hopefully, the Native Land Project will continue to be funded, it relies on donations, and can continue to expand to reflect various indigenous peoples across the world.
The sources use are as follows:
-'Native-Land Project,' https://native-land.ca/
-'The Decolonial Atlas,' https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/
-Denis Wood, Rethinking the Power of Maps, (New York: Guilford Press, 2010)
-Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London: Verso, 1991)
-J.B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2001)
For other Left-Wing and the 'Other' History posts please see our list here. For other blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
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