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.