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- Convenor:
-
James Rose
(The University of Melbourne)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- Maps
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 15 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel brings together papers on innovative applications of digital mapping technology to the modelling of Indigenous territories, spanning Canada, Brazil, Australia and the USA.
Long Abstract:
The mapping of cultural territories is a central feature of social anthropological research. In complex colonial administrative settings, mapping of Indigenous territories is one of the critical functions of social anthropology. Social anthropologists working in these settings, whether on behalf of government, the judiciary, NGOs or Indigenous communities, rely on accurate, accessible and functional mapping technologies in order to deliver their expertise effectively.
These geographic information systems (GIS) not only augment other methodological technologies in the anthropological toolkit, but also open up new approaches to the modelling and analysis of field data drawn from interviews, surveys, audio and video recordings, and various forms of telemetry.
Innovations in GIS, driven by bourgeoning internet and mobile phone use, have allowed recent generations of social anthropologists to develop new methods for mapping Indigenous territories. The proliferation of open source software and code, combined with increasing literacy in programming and readily accessible hardware, is seeing contemporary anthropological practice merge with previously discrete quantitative fields such as computing and data science.
Most importantly, more accessible and functional GIS allows for a more equitable engagement by Indigenous communities in anthropological research. Rather than relying exclusively on the skill, expertise and ethical commitment of social anthropologists to develop accurate territorial models, Indigenous communities can now use those same technologies to develop their own models and analyses and to error-check the work of anthropologists.
This panel brings together papers on innovative applications of digital mapping technology to the modelling of Indigenous territories spanning Canada, Brazil, Australia and the USA.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 15 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
This paper reports on an experimental digital map that offers new possibilities for representing Indigenous territories drawing on an ethnographically informed land tenure model, and Indigenous notions of relational ontology.
Paper long abstract:
The troubling language of 'overlapping claims' is exacerbated by polygon-based ways of representing Indigenous territories in maps, and ethnocentric assumptions about the nature of property, jurisdiction and cultural practice that go with conceptualizing territory as fixed and contiguous. This paper reports on an experimental digital map that offers new possibilities for representing Indigenous territories drawing on an ethnographically informed land tenure model, and Indigenous notions of relational ontology. This map experiment eschews Western cartographic traditions of using bounded polygons to represent indigenous territorial boundaries, drawing on the powerful deck.gl programming script to create dynamic radiating lines to highlight networks of relationships of people to places.
Our work is informed by long-term collaborative ethnography which set the background of land tenure and relations for the map design and content, and detailed discussions about implications of such an experimental map with indigenous leaders, negotiators and analysts who are primary users of such cartographic representations of their territory in Indigenous rights and title contexts. We argue that such novel high-tech methods to represent Indigenous peoples' concepts of territories based on Indigenous legal orders and relationships to place, rather than perpetuating the denomination of Western cartographic methods, can facilitate a conversation about territory, sovereignty, and how to most effectively use maps as tools. We hope to stimulate new conversations that avoid overlapping claims discourses.
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes the concept and application of the forensic technique of spatio-temporal kinship network analysis (stKNA), used as an evidentiary tool in the negotiation and litigation of Indigenous land rights in Australia's Federal Court, under that country's National Native Native Title Act.
Paper long abstract:
The relationship between social anthropology and geography has been mediated by anthropology's specialised subfield of kinship analysis since the discipline's foundation in the 1870s. As this specialisation evolved with the incorporation of more formal modelling and analysis techniques from the 1960s, and especially with the incorporation of computing from the 1990s, both kinship analysis and geographic information systems have become more precise, with corresponding datasets growing to very large sizes. During the same period in Australia, social anthropology has been adopted by Commonwealth, state, and territory governments as a forensic discipline in the negotiation and litigation of Indigenous land rights via the Federal Court. This turn of events has spurred the development of the new methodology of spatio-temporal kinship network analysis (stKNA), a computer-based technique for modelling Indigenous kinship-based population networks as three-dimensional structures distributed over real geographic space and historical time. Using this methodology, forensic social anthropologists are able to demonstrate the kinship-based cohesion of Indigenous communities over large time-scales, together with their systemic association with the particular geographic regions to which they assert traditional ownership. This paper outlines the methodology of stKNA and its application in Australia.
Paper short abstract:
Ever since the earliest documentary evidence on ceremonialism in the Gran Nayar began to appear in the sixteenth century, ritual practices have been a sign of resistance to colonial and national authority.
Paper long abstract:
During the last decade of the XX Century, ritual practices have been significant in land claim litigation by Náyarite people of the Gran Nayar, Mexico. The unusually prolonged and violent struggle of Náyarite people to defend their religious systems and territory is related to opium cultivation. Thus, this paper examines how náyarite people use everyday ritual actions such as pilgrimages or treks, transporting sacred waters from distant springs back to sacred sites and share encoded messages via two-way radios to delimitate and inscribe their cultural space. We also discuss Náyarite’s emic concepts of social space, landscape and territoriality and how poppy cultivation has been used to sustain political and territorial autonomy throughout the Gran Nayar region.
Thus, this paper examines how Náyarite people use everyday ritual actions such as pilgrimages or treks, transporting sacred waters from distant springs back to sacred sites and share encoded messages via two-way radios to delimitate and inscribe their cultural space or territory.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the possibilities and limitations of interactive digital mapping when used by Indigenous communities to store and circulate geospatially referenced cultural information
Paper long abstract:
Interactive digital maps embedding audio and visual data are s subject of persistent interest and debate for Indigenous communities, scholar-collaborators, philanthropies and government agency funders. On one hand, they offer enticing possibilities for presenting, transmitting, and interacting with cultural information, organized geospatially, while also sometimes promising granular access controls for sensitive information. On the other, in terms of data ownership, privacy, security, and usability, interactive digital maps present a variety of predicaments for Indigenous systems of governance and cultural authority. Some of these relate to the technical limitations of mapping platforms, including the extent to which geospatial applications are reliant on distributed cloud-based platforms, or whether platforms are able to adequately represent and mediate Indigenous systems of place, or fully implement Indigenous systems of authority controlling the circulation of knowledge. Based on experience working with digital mapping in Indigenous communities in Australia and the United States, this talk will canvas a set of related issues, not in essence technical or technology based. At their core, these issues come back to how interactive maps provide a framework for articulating hopes and anxieties about the intergenerational transmission and reproduction of place-based knowledge. I asks the following questions: how are various, sometimes competing sources of authority over cultural knowledge within communities recognized in the production and circulation of interactive maps? How might maps be made and circulated in ways that contribute to Indigenous control of knowledge, its legacies and futures, within Indigenous communities, and as they interface with academic and state institutions? I discuss examples of how Indigenous communities look to incorporate both new and legacy data that are part of their cultural property in mapping platforms.