18-4 Geomatics: Who Needs It?

What's in a Name? Can Native Americans Control Outsiders' Use of their Tribal Names?

In the United States, Native American names and symbols appear on many company products. Jeep Cherokee, Pontiac cars, Shawmut Bank, Mohawk Paper Company, Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and Sioux Industries are just a few examples. Indigenous names seem to be showing up more frequently, maybe a case of commercial markets following the renewed interest in Native peoples in the United States. Urban…

Tribes and States Clash Over Gaming Legislation

The enactment of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988, which was sponsored by Senator Inouye of Hawaii and Senator Evans of Washington, has spurred the growth of High Stakes Gaming on Indian Reservations. Tribally run gaming represents about 3% of all national gaming. With $4 billion in gross income, there are 59 tribes in 16 states with High Stakes Gaming. Since the amendment was…

Towards Information Self-Sufficiency: The Nunavik Inuit gather information on ecology and land use

In November 1975, the Inuit of Nunavik (northern Quebec, Canada) signed the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, a document that would bring significant change to all aspects of the cultural, economic and political life of Nunavik. The signing of this document culminated a period of intense change set in motion by government programs initiated in northern Quebec with little consultation and…

The Ye'kuana Self-Demarcation Process

The Ye'kuanas of southern Venezuela have been creating a series of ethnocultural maps of fight for legal title to their ancestral lands. The map-making process involved several phases, beginning with an ethnocultural history narrated by one of the elders and assented to by a major gathering of Ye'kuanas. The creation of the maps and history also required the resolution of a deep and decades-old…

The LEO Project: Local Earth Observation

The idea for the LEO project arose from several sources. One was a collaborative project with the Inuit community of Pangnirtung to develop local capacities for search and rescue as an alternative to relying upon aircraft dispatched from southern Canada. We used prototypes of a new rescue beacon that emits a distress signal to the US-Russian global rescue system. We also used early versions of…

The EAGLE Project: Re-mapping Canada from an Indigenous Perspective

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has engaged in a project involving some 61 indigenous communities in the Great Lakes Drainage Basin of central Ontario. The environmental health study and risk assessment being conducted by the EAGLE project (Effects on Aboriginals for the Great Lakes Environment) is based on the assumption that aboriginal people consume, on average, a greater amount of fish…

Sacred Indian Site Headed for a Mini-Mall Future?

Cal State University-Long Beach plans to build a mini-mall on the last undeveloped remnant of the Indian village, Puvungna, sacred as an historic pilgrimage site. This land was a trade and ceremonial center inhabited by the Gabrielino or Mission Indians and place where the prophet Chungichnish lived and taught. Many Indian people still use Puvungna as a place of worship. The area contains burial…

Resource Information Training Program

In 1992, the first Resource Information Management training program was presented by Westcoast Forestry Training Centre, a trade school offering silviculture compute training in remote communities. The programs assist First Nations communities a research and create maps of their traditional territories showing the different natural renewable and non-renewable resources. Some maps illustrate the…

Regional Environmental Commission Established in Honduran Mosquitia

The various indigenous peoples of the Honduran Mosquitia, a vast, virtually roadless area that spans the northeastern lowlands of Honduras and into adjacent Nicaragua, have joined forces to monitor environmental damage and attempt to control natural resource exploitation within their traditional lands. Through "CODIMMA", the regional Commission on Development of la Mosquitia and the Environment,…

Land-Based Communities, Geomatics and Biodiversity Conservation

This 82-page Survey, comprising some 60 projects, was prepared for the Biodiversity Support Program, a consortium formed by the World Wildlife Fund-US, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resource Institute. It was commissioned early in 1994 by the staff of the BSP's South-East Asia Program after having encountered growing local interest in mapping technologies. The objective of the Survey was…

Indigenous Cultural and Biological Diversity: Overlapping Values of Latin American Ecoregions

Indigenous Cultural and Biological Diversity: Overlapping Values of Latin. American Ecoregions It is well known that the number of culturally distinct indigenous populations tends be high in tropical rain forests, the most biological rich and ecologically significant ecosystems in the world. Yet the overall correspondence of cultural diversity with globally significant biological values within…

Heirs to the Land: Mapping the Future of the Makalu-Barun

PROTECTING THE LANDS OF THE MAKALU-BARUN The Makalu-Barun region of northeastern Nepal, begins east of Mr. Everest and extends forty kilometers to the Arun River, one of the world's deepest river gorges. It is remote and wild, even by Nepalese standards. The nearest roadhead is a hard five-day walk, and many villagers have never been that for south. They are unfamiliar with cars, tape recorders,…

Habitation Sites and Culturally Modified Trees: Using Predictive Models in Ditidaht Territory

The Ditidaht First Nation from the west coast of Vancouver Island is using geographic information systems to predict where ancient habitation sites and culturally modified trees may be located. Culturally modified trees (CMTs) are trees where the bark has been partially stripped for native use, or a portion of the trunk has been removed for house building or similar uses. Such trees are common in…

Guide to the Technology

SCOPE AND LOCAL POTENTIAL OF GEOMATICS Geomatics, a useful new term, refers to the elaboration of traditional mapping methodologies by advanced information technologies for the recording, storage, manipulation and analysis of geographical imagery. They comprise three technologies: remoter sensing, global positioning systems (GPS), and computer-based image manipulation and analysis. All three are…

GIS and Long Range Economic Planning for Indigenous Territories

Along the Ampiyacu River, a tributary of the Peruvian Amazon near the border with Brazil, exist fourteen communities of Huitoto, Bora, Yagua, and Ocaina peoples. IN 1992 our research team listened to them lament the disappearance of game animals from their forests. To find large game animals like peccary, deer and tapir, hunters had to walk five days into the forest, and even then, it was now…

Geomatics: Who Needs It?

In Sarawak, Penan can get arrested for possessing a map. Maps have always been both symbols and instruments of power. After flag raising came the naming of places to express possession for the gratification of distant patron of exploratory expeditions. Now, a revisionist tendency is reasserting itself: indigenous peoples are using maps to re-name and reclaim their lands. Their maps remain…

Geomatics and Political Empowerment: The Yuqui "...that master tool, geography's perfection, the map."

Geomatics and Political Empowerment: The Yuquí "...that master tool,. geography's perfection, the map." Geomatics, a new term covering the rapidly evolving types of equipment and applications designed to capture spatial information, have gone far beyond the making of maps. Advances in the technologies behind Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and Remote…

Gendered Resource Mapping: Focusing on Women's Spaces in the Landscape

Cultural survival and the geographic ordering of space are tightly interwined. Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and other associations of peoples whose ways of life are under threat have long turned to the defense of specific territories as a means of increasing their control over the pace and direction of cultural change. Many have been assisted in their efforts by a growing willingness of…

Finders Keepers? Adulteration of Native American Cultures in the Name of Profit

Finders Keepers? Adulteration of Native American Cultures in the Name of. Profit To this list of uses for Indians, Berkhofer could easily have added commercial marketing. Forbes Magazine quoted a judge of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival as saying, "[American Indians are] being used to sell everything from cars to chocolate all over the world." And as Michael Dorris, a Native American author and…

Ethnocartography in the Darien

Ethnocartography in the Darién. The Caribbean coastal plain of Central America is a zone of dense tropical forests, natural pine savannahas, and mangrove estuaries. Stretching from Belize down through Panama, it contains the last remaining wilderness areas of the region, and as such contains a large portion of Central America's biodiversity. Until recently, this sparsely populated, remote region…

Empowering Local Communities in Land-Use Management: The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, Acre, Brazil

Empowering Local Communities in Land-Use Management: The Chico Mendes. Extractive Reserve, Acre, Brazil Tropical forests have a gained renown as the major reservoir for terrestrial biological diversity and as important reservoir for biospheric carbon that can affect hear trapping gases in the atmosphere. These forests also house traditional communities that have developed unique approaches to use…

Defending the Miskito Reefs with Maps and GPS: Mapping With Sail, Scuba, and Satellite

Defending the Miskito Reefs with Maps and GPS: Mapping With Sail, Scuba,. and Satellite On the far western edge of the Caribbean, within the wide marine shallows of coral, sand and seagrass, in the communal sea territory of indigenous coastal communities, Miskito "captain" - the traditional sea knowledge specialists - are working with invited marine scientists, Miskito environmentalists and…

Community-Based Mapping in Southeast Asia

For some time now land use planners have been using sketch mapping and participatory rural appraisal as tools for land use planning, community development planning, and resolving land use conflicts with indigenous communities in Asia. Once the task of expert consultants and government extension officers, local NGOs are now developing the skills to be able to make accurate maps themselves and to…

2,000 NGOs Support Manibeli Declaration

On October 3, 1994, over two thousand NGOs from 44 countries issued the Manibeli Declaration calling for a moratorium on World Bank funding of large dam projects. Named in honor of the people of Manibeli in India's Narmada Valley (Now submerged under 20-30 meters of water), the declaration insists that the World Bank meet nine conditions before funding any further large-scale dams. Among these…