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Paper short abstract:

Anishinaabe scholars today are making ways and space for other Anishinaabe academics to recognize their ways of knowing as a legitimate research methodology using their language. This presentation will give examples of traditional Anishinaabe stories using Dibaajmowin, Aadzookaan, and Aansookaan.

Paper long abstract:

Indigenous peoples have sought to be and are increasingly involved in the designing and selecting of content and methods of presentation of museum exhibits and educational curricula about their own cultures and histories. Maps have traditionally been used to situate a people in a spatial area and sometimes to graphically represent aspects of their culture. However, museum maps and historical cartography in general had ethnocentric and colonialist biases and thus misrepresented Indigenous peoples' views of their territory, their cultural knowledge, and their histories. These maps tended to present Indigenous cultures, socio-political structures, and territories as static or disappearing rather than as vibrant, evolving cultures. How can new possibilities within Indigenous counter-mapping aid land claim negotiations and/or decolonizing space and place?

This presentation will examine the potential of Indigenous interactive mapping to facilitate greater Indigenous community involvement in portraying, preserving, and revitalizing their culture and relationship to their land within Indigenous resurgences. In addition, interactive mapping will be examined for its potential to address the limitations of static mapping in presenting a true Indigenous perspective, one that would involve incorporating traditional ways of imparting knowledge, such as storytelling, oral history, art, music, and dance. From the user's perspective, this type of modern technology for constructing digital maps can offer alternative perspectives of Indigenous cultural representations while simultaneously providing new insights within contested areas of space between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.