To build and share new knowledge of Indigenous mapping techniques from First Nations people globally

Acknowledgment of Country

I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands we are meeting on today. For me here in Perth that is the Whadjuk People of the Noongar Nation. I offer my respect to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge this always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

An online version of the report is available here:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf909ab104014ab1adc832664f72a984

Introduction

I am a spatial scientist - map maker. I have been working and mapping with Aboriginal peoples across Australia since 2000. I have seen maps in Australia used to win Native Title claims, show massacres, help Indigenous rangers Care for Country, and show the breadth and depth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and knowledges. In 2019 I attended the Indigenous Mapping Workshops in Australia (Aug) and Canada (Oct) where I met people using a wide range of mapping techniques to collect, protect and share their traditional language and knowledge. I wanted to learn more and applied for this Churchill Fellowship to do that. I have been closely affiliated with the Australian Indigenous Mapping Workshop since 2019, including preparing coursework for spatial data management. This is a great forum to share my findings from the Fellowship.

For this Churchill Fellowship I visited First Nations peoples in Canada, Native Americans in the USA, and Sami people in Norway. While my initial purpose was to learn about mapping techniques, I found my journey took me along several paths - each equally important to facilitate the collection, protection, and sharing of knowledge. To describe my journey and findings I have split my story into 3 colour-coded paths:

1. Mapping - Indigenous mapping techniques to share language and knowledge

2. Connecting - building a network of Universities and Indigenous students for science and mapping exchange and collaborations.

3. Engagement & Knowledge Sharing - techniques and strategies for Community engagement, and sharing, storing, and repatriating Indigenous stories and objects.

Each path is shared as a separate map. You can scroll down this page to get to them or click on their links on menu bar above. The first map is the Itinerary - this takes you on a tour of where I went with a brief description of who I met there, what we discussed, and possible outcomes from this visit. Each block includes a note of which paths to look at for more information about this visit.

Keywords: Indigenous, language, traditional knowledge, mapping, STEM, Sami, Native American, First Nations, pathways