For thousands of years, Indigenous communities across the Americas have been creating, storing, and using geospatial knowledge through mapping the landscapes they interact with. Administrative boundaries, hydrology, transportation, environmental, natural resources, and land use datasets are not new ideas for indigenous communities. Instead, they come from a long tradition of traditional geospatial knowledge created by mapping riverways, ridges, valleys, roads, eco zones, and other data on the landscape. This data was stored within the minds of the community, and backed-up and shared through oral traditions. As seen today, much of the landscape is still dotted in traditional places names as indigenous people mapped their lands. Geospatial thinking is not a new concept; we just have new tools that allow us creating, storing, and applying our data in a different format.
Today, many Tribes are using GNSS and GIS to create and store data. To meet the needs of the present society, Tribes have readapted GIS to better meet their needs. This implementation has allowed tribes to tap into their already existing traditional geospatial knowledge to solve problems for their government, businesses, and communities. It’s important to understand that Tribes are both a government and a business, both with the responsibility to their community. These tribal communities are the Tribe’s largest assets of information and sharing. This makes it important to reinvest back into the community. As GIS professionals, our role is to adapt our data to help our communities. This means going beyond just creating, storing, and using geospatial data; we need to apply it.
The basis of applying geospatial thinking to our community comes from the heart. This applies to any tribal employee or any other employee of an organization working on behalf of a tribe or Indian County. Having a passion for our tribal communities enables us to reach higher levels of inspiration and efficiency, thus doing a better service to our tribal community. Tribes have many different uses for GIS, including transportation, housing, environmental, cultural, business, and many more. Within these datasets is information that we can share with our tribal communities. By sharing our data with the community, we can empower them to make better informed decisions daily. What data do you have that could help tribal communities?
Another step in empowering our communities is training the next generations of GIS professionals. Just as tribes used to pass geospatial knowledge onto youth in the past, it is still a good way of training youth today. It only takes a few interested youth to ensure our legacy of traditional geospatial knowledge continues. How are you engaging tribal youth?
To learn more about the
1723 Deerskin Map click here.
Ryan Spring
Director, GIS/GPS Specialist
Historic Preservation Department
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
