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Understanding the Current Complexities of Indigenous Land Tenure and Toponymy: The Importance of Historical Indigenous Cartography with Indigenous Contributions to Euro/American/Canadian Cartography
Cole, D.G.; Hart, E.R. The Importance of Indigenous Cartography and Toponymy to Historical Land Tenure and Contributions to Euro/American/Canadian Cartography. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf.2021, 10, 397.
Cole, D.G.; Hart, E.R. The Importance of Indigenous Cartography and Toponymy to Historical Land Tenure and Contributions to Euro/American/Canadian Cartography. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2021, 10, 397.
Cole, D.G.; Hart, E.R. The Importance of Indigenous Cartography and Toponymy to Historical Land Tenure and Contributions to Euro/American/Canadian Cartography. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf.2021, 10, 397.
Cole, D.G.; Hart, E.R. The Importance of Indigenous Cartography and Toponymy to Historical Land Tenure and Contributions to Euro/American/Canadian Cartography. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2021, 10, 397.
Abstract
In recent years, many libraries and archives have started digitizing their collections thus making maps by Indigenous peoples more easily available for scholars to study. While a number of these maps were discussed by G. Malcolm Lewis in the History of Cartography series (volume 2, book 3, Chapter 4: 1984), more have since been found and disseminated. These maps are critical in understanding the historic and current land tenure of Indigenous groups. Further, Indigenous claims to land can be seen in their connections via toponymy. European concepts of territory and political boundaries did not coincide with First Nation/American Indian views resulting in the mistaken view that Natives did not have formal concepts of their territories. Further, Tribes/First Nations with cross-border territory have special jurisdictional problems. This paper will illustrate how many Native residents were very spatially cognizant of their own lands, as well as neighboring nations’ lands, overlaps between groups, hunting territories, populations, and trade networks. Currently, the Sinixt First Nation provides a perfect example of how an Aboriginal people are inputting and using a GIS representation of their territory with proper toponymy and use areas.
Keywords
Indigenous; toponomy; land tenure; cartography
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Accounting and Taxation
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
