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To what extent can online mapping be decolonial? A journey throughout Indigenous cartography in Canada
Author(s) -
McGurk Thomas J.,
Caquard Sébastien
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the canadian geographer / le géographe canadien
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.35
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1541-0064
pISSN - 0008-3658
DOI - 10.1111/cag.12602
Subject(s) - indigenous , sketch , storytelling , digital storytelling , geography , cartography , digital mapping , visual arts , world wide web , narrative , art , computer science , ecology , biology , literature , algorithm
In this paper, we describe and reflect upon our journey through Indigenous online mapping in Canada. This journey has been planned according to an academic goal: assessing the potential of online cartography for decolonial purposes. To reach this goal, we have followed methodological directions provided by Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith to review 18 Indigenous web‐mapping sites across Canada. Supported by a series of ten interviews, this content analysis enabled us to sketch some of the contours of contemporary Indigenous cartography. On one hand, Indigenous communities largely control the data that are shared on these websites. They also partially control the way these data are represented through the mobilization of digital storytelling technologies that are better aligned with Indigenous ways of envisioning relationships to places than conventional maps. On the other hand, they do not have much control over the technological aspects of these projects, for which they remain heavily dependent on non‐Indigenous partners. Throughout this journey, we noticed that women's voices remained marginal in most of these mapping projects, but we also identified evidence supporting the idea that these voices are starting to play a vital role in the on‐going effort of decolonizing mapping processes .