In a recent special issue on “ Decolonizing the Map” in the journal, Cartographica, which I co-edited with Natchee Blu Barnd, Annita Hetoevėhotohke’e Lucchesi, Sharon Dias, and Wil Patrick, we contend that recentering Indigenous mappings is a necessary step toward decolonizing both cartographic theory and practice as well as the stories we tell about the history of cartography. Yet how might we move beyond the colonial cartographic frame in an effort to decolonize the map? This Eurocentric legacy of colonial mapping continues to shape geographical imaginaries in the present, and there is no shortage of both conventional and critical historical accounts of the “ imperial map.” Yet, by continuously highlighting the power of colonial and imperial maps, this has the effect of reinforcing a Eurocentric narrative of cartographic history that further marginalizes Indigenous traditions of mapping. These acts of colonial world-making were also acts of world-taking – placing the imaginative geographies of Indigenous peoples under erasure and ultimately resulting in the dispossession of Indigenous lands to make way for colonial settlement and territorial control. When European colonial explorers mapped the world at the behest of imperial monarchs, the names of places and boundary lines that they inscribed on maps were instrumental in creating the geographical imaginaries of empire. Mapping is an art of persuasion that often aims to seduce us into believing that the map merely describes the world as it is, yet historians of cartography have long understood that mapping is a form of world-making. Written by guest blogger Reuben Rose-Redwood. Print by Katrina Brown Akootchook and photograph of the print by Berdell Paninguna Akootchook.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |