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- Convenors:
-
Annick Thomassin
(The Australian National University)
Frances Morphy (The Australian National University)
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- Discussants:
-
Jason Field
(Australia National University)
Sylvie Poirier (Université Laval)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 1 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
In settler-colonial contexts, the coexistence of diverse worlds, and the implications of their entanglement, is being explored through collaborative mapping and digital storytelling projects. This panel explores how mapping these new ontological relationships can redefine settler-colonial futures.
Long Abstract:
This panel will be an occasion to explore and share information about the potential of digital tools such as collaborative mapping and digital storytelling for the representation of Indigenous peoples’ engagement with their territories of life (akin to ‘Country’ in the Australian context) in settler-colonial contexts.
The coexistence of heterogeneous settler and Indigenous worlds, and the implications of their enmeshed and co-constituted existence, are increasingly being explored through the use of such digital tools. Informed by contemporary Indigenous movements of everyday resurgence, inscribed in actions that revitalise, maintain, strengthen or generate meaningful relationships with territories of life and all the relations they encompass, this panel will feature projects which challenge dominant settler understandings of and engagement with territories of life.
Digital tools may be deployed, initially, to illuminate Indigenous relational and reciprocal engagements with the land, the sea, the sky, and with humans and other-than-human beings. But the contributors to the panel will be encouraged to go beyond a discourse that seeks recognition of and respect for Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, perspectives and practices, and their integration into the frame of settler ontologies, to consider how such tools can be employed in supporting the renegotiation of the terms of coexistence between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonial institutions. They will reflect on the entangled relations between co-existing settler and Indigenous worlds and on the need for a transformation of the dominant settler-state worldview that will result in a genuinely new ontology. Contributors to the panel are thus strongly encouraged to consider how their work, using these approaches, might be useful for instigating a shift in persistent settler-colonial worldviews and for negotiating new ways of being and engaging with the world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 30 November, 2021, -Benoit Éthier (Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue) Sylvie Poirier (Université Laval)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is about the dynamics of the entanglement of territorial regimes that coexist today within Nitaskinan (Atikamekw Nehirowisiw ancestral territory) and the challenges of indigenous cartographic productions in this context of territorial coexistence and ontological violence.
Paper long abstract:
Within Nitaskinan, the ancestral territory of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok (North Central Quebec), the members of the nation negotiate the continuity of their practices, their occupation and their use of ancestral hunting territories with state institutions, forestry companies and members of the non-indigenous civil society. All of these actors use the same territory but with different, often divergent, interests. This presentation discusses the dynamics of the entanglement of territorial regimes that coexist today within Nitaskinan and the challenges of indigenous cartographic productions, from topographical to digital, in this context of territorial coexistence and ontological violence. Particular attention is given to the creative resistance strategies deployed by the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok through mapping, the collective revitalization of the use of waterways (mohonan) and winter trails (moteskano) and the intergenerational transmission of territorial knowledge in the contemporary context.
Brian Thom (University of Victoria)
Paper short abstract:
Three collaborative Indigenous storied mapping projects in British Columbia have become entangled with Indigenous work to decolonize education, to reframe municipal land use planning, and to ignite political dialogue to resolve overlapping claims by innovating with Google's geo tools.
Paper long abstract:
In Canada Traditional Land Use and Occupancy Studies (TLUOS) have long been the basic cartographic framework to visualize the spatial dimensions of Indigneous land and cultural rights. Alongside the hodgepodge of points, lines and polygons used in TLUOS, archaeological mapping has been a second mainstay of engaging the state in recognition frameworks, drawing out the physical footprint of material remains to trigger heritage-based land protection measures. Though powerful in some instances, these cartographic traditions also work to exacerbate overlapping claims, to freeze and gender relations to land, and to circumscribe the footprints of ancestral agency.
Through the University of Victoria’s Ethnographic Mapping Lab, in collaboration with Indigenous communities in British Columbia, we have created innovative digital maps that attend to dynamic relationships through the power of story, and to transcend scales in the archaeological and ethnohistoric record to see both intimate knowledges of place and the strength of cultural landscapes. Our work leverages Google Earth and other geo tools in ways that are attuned to the political ontology of a figured ancestral landscape, to narratives and priorities that do not always align with state recognition frameworks.
In this paper, I will describe how three of these projects have become entangled with Indigenous work to decolonize education, to reframe municipal land use planning, and to ignite political dialogue to resolve overlapping claims. The stories of giants, the agency of ancestors, and the complex networks of kin that bind to places provide the framework for our mapping work.
Sam Provost (ANU)
Paper short abstract:
By exploring geospatial map-making as practices of caring for Country, I argue that emerging spatial technologies can support Indigenous assertions of sovereignty, goals of decolonisation and self-determination, and the work being done to build Indigenous futures.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I explore the development of Indigenous Geographic Information Systems as a practice of caring for, and relating to, Country. This process, I argue, must arise from a critique of western spatial paradigms that have played a key role in dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their lands and waters. Without engaging critically with this history, mapping has the potential to reproduce the violence of settler colonial logics of possession. I present Country as a vast relational network that is diminished by capitalistic understandings of property and western scientific preoccupation with differentiation and categorisation. These narrow frames of reference are incompatible with expansive Indigenous understandings of Country, and as such, I argue that meaningful Indigenous mapping work is tasked with offering pathways for resisting settler colonial spatial imaginaries through attending to processes of reconnection. By understanding Indigenous geospatial map-making as an extension of epistemologies grounded in relationality, I argue that emerging spatial technologies can support Indigenous assertions of sovereignty, goals of decolonisation and self-determination, and the work being done to build Indigenous futures.
Annick Thomassin (The Australian National University) Kim Spurway (Western Sydney University) Linda Carlson (Mogo Local Aboriginal Land Council)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper we explore the benefits offered and challenges posed by collaborative mapping and digital storytelling to support the resurgence of environmental custodianship in Walbanga Land and Sea Country (South Coast, NSW)
Paper long abstract:
For several decades, members of the Walbanga community have aspired to strengthen their capacity to influence development and environmental management decisions across their territory. Located on the populated southeastern seaboard, Walbanga Country is facing continuous development pressure from urban expansion, population growth, commercial fishing and tourism. So far, Traditional Owners have had little say over the region’s future. Their contributions to the consultations underpinning Batemans Marine Park’s creation was unsuccessful in having their rights, responsibilities and the deep connections that they, as saltwater people, hold towards their coastal and marine environments recognised. Despite being a sizeable percentage of Mogo and Batemans Bay region’s population, Walbanga history, relationship to Country and environmental custodianship practices have remained relatively invisible to the general population. The bushfire that devastated Mogo and Batemans Bay over the last hours of 2019 was, however, a stark reminder of the urgency of developing risk mitigation, adaptation and responses to future threats associated with climate change framed by Walbanga philosophies, knowledge and aspirations.
In this paper, we explore the benefits offered and challenges posed by collaborative mapping and digital storytelling to support the resurgence of environmental custodianship in Walbanga land and sea Country. We examine whether the growing accessibility of Indigenous knowledge applications, mapping technologies and digital storytelling platforms can facilitate Indigenous peoples’ resurgence projects and performance of their sovereignty. Can these platforms help increase the wider public’s comprehension of past and contemporary Indigenous reciprocal engagements with their territories, shift Indigenous peoples-settlers’ relations and settlers’ engagements with Country?