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.