Such projects are spreading beyond academia as technology

Such projects are spreading beyond academia as technology amplifies previously unheard voices and dissent and, to borrow an old postcolonial phrase, “rewrites the empire”-or, in this case, “rewrites. “This is the intent of the online project Native Land, an interactive website that, according to Atlas Obscura, is the “opposite” of centuries-old colonial cartography, “removing land and state boundaries to highlight the complex interweaving of historical and current indigenous territories, treaties and languages that span the United States, Canada, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland and Australia.” Temprano makes no claim to definitive historical accuracy, but points to other similar projects filling in the “blank spots” of “his” own online map, such as the vast expanses of South America redrawn in the field by Amazon tribes recording field data using smartphones, and Aaron Capella’s “Tribal People Maps,” offering an attractive printed product perfect for classroom use. “After discovery by Europeans,” writes historian Michel-Rolf Trouillot, after classification, mapping and enslavement, “the Other finally appears in the human world.” For several decades, postcolonial projects have sought a gradual disillusionment with ‘the idea,’ a recognition of the interrelated relationships between naming, mapping and power, and a return, where possible, to the names, borders and identities that lurk behind faded history.” Visit the Native Land site and enter an address in North America, South America, or Australia to learn more about past or present Native people, their languages, and historical treaties signed and broken over the centuries. By clicking on each indigenous territory, you will find links to other informative sites and can make corrections to improve the accuracy of this global project. At a time when neo-colonial projects such as oil pipelines are again threatening the survival of indigenous communities, and indigenous people and their children are jailed for crossing militarized land borders, these issues could not be more timely. She wants to urge people, indigenous and non-indigenous, to remember that this land was once a vast territory inhabited by self-governing indigenous peoples who gave the land different names depending on their language and geography. Brown notes that “the materials used to make maps, charts, and globes contributed to their destruction. The paper burns, rots, is attacked by water and insects.”