-Also solves the entirety of the aff
Johnson, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Department of Anthropology and
Geography, et al, 6
[Jay T., Renee Pualani Louis, Department of Geography, Univeristy of Hawai’I at Mānoa, Albertus Hadi Pramono, Department of Geography, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa,
“Facing the Future: Encouraging Critical Cartographic Literacies In Indigenous
Communities”, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, Volume 4, Number 1, pg 89-90 PAC]
In order to re-educate the ‘colonized mind’ in relation to cartography’s role in colonial dispossession a pedagogic focus is called for within ‘counter-mapping’ projects. Indigenous communities need to become aware not only of the historical role of cartography in their dispossession but also in the ways in which cartography continues to betray these same communities today, even when the maps/GIS being produced are objectively intended to benefit their interests. Of course we agree with Sparke when he says that “*s+howing how cartography can operate both for and against colonialism not only
deepens the scholarly work of critical cartography, it also counters the too-speedy denunciation of maps and mapping as metaphors of domination” (1998: 466). Let us paint a worst case scenario though for how the uncritical adoption of Western cartographic techniques can serve to perpetuate colonial dispossessions. First, putting indigenous knowledge into a GIS makes it tangible and accessible. It may even diminish it, as Rundstrom has observed, because it is no longer contextually defined (1998).
Secondly, storing information within a GIS makes it easier for that information to be used beyond its original intent and context. Lastly, because the source and recipient of the information is separated in space and time it becomes more difficult to impose moral restraint on its use. Indigenous
communities need to understand the full implications of their engagement with Western cartographic techniques and we believe that can be achieved through education that encourages a critical
cartographic literacy.
We envision two different but not mutually exclusive paths toward creating critical cartographic literacy within Indigenous communities. First, as has been alluded to, ‘counter-mapping’ projects need to make critical education, preferably through a Freirean ‘problem posing’ technique, an integral part of their program. Here the outsiders and Indigenous community members, as knowing Subjects, learn together to problematize the spatial realities represented within the mapping process and investigate the impacts of this process on Indigenous mapping. In this process both groups gain and give new meanings to the world which feeds into their map production. To date, dialogue in counter-mapping has been problematic because many researchers/map makers envision Western cartographic
techniques as the perfect/sole solution to the land and resource dispossessions of the communities in which they are working. To truly engage in a dialogic counter mapping process, it would be beneficial if outside experts engage in identifying their own ‘colonized mentality’ before attempting to create critical consciousness among the community. They should embrace a ‘border crossing’ in order to move beyond their own cultural roots allowing them to feel comfortable within various zones of cultural diversity (Giroux, 1995). This means that outside cartographers/mapmakers must understand
Indigenous cartographies and make every effort to incorporate these diverse knowledge systems into a ‘new’ mapping endeavor which will strive toward a post-colonial, post-modern cartography
(Turnbull, 1998). This understanding though may require an extensive apprenticeship within which outsiders learn the language, cultural values and knowledge systems that underlie Indigenous cartographies.
The second path we envision for bringing critical cartographic literacy into Indigenous communities entails community members becoming adept in the Cartesian/Newtonian cartographic epistemology.
Skilled Indigenous cartographers can act as advocates as well as technicians for their own and other Indigenous communities. They can also become key agents and educators within Indigenous
communities, building critical cartographic literacy through their understanding of the epistemological divide between Western and Indigenous cartographic systems. These steps toward critical
cartographic literacy are only the beginning of what will be required for Indigenous communities in their response to and engagement with Western cartographic technologies. We envision that the development of a critical consciousness in relation to cartographic representation will lay the foundation to addressing more concrete issues related to this engagement such as reflexivity concerning the use of these technologies and the internal community critique of the maps produced.
Perspectives of the Pacific are flawed—need to take indigenous mapping into perspective Jolly, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia 7
(Margaret Jolly, “Imagining Oceania: Indigenous and Foreign Representations of a Sea of Islands”, The Contemporary Pacific, Volume 19, Number 2, 508–545, accessed 6/30/14) NM
In imagining any region of the world today we often start with cartography—
with a map.1 Yet the maps we draw are never reflections of the world as it is, but always partial representations of it—representations powerfully shaped by who we are, where and when we are, and what motivates our interests in that place.2 Maps of Japan appropriate to tourist sojourning, to seismic charting, to military conquest, or to developmentalist economics would differ radically.3In this article I look at several maps of the Pacific, generated in different places and times and for different purposes.
But let me start with two maps that derive from the late eighteenth century. The first is the map of Tupaia, a man from Ra‘iatea, priest of the ‘Oro religion, member of the arioi cult, and adviser to the chiefs of Tahiti.4 (See figure 1). Tupaia joined the Endeavour when Captain Cook left Tahiti in the Society Islands in July 1769. Cook thought him immensely intelligent and knowledgeable both about the
geography of the islands and the varied customs of its peoples. Joseph Banks sought his assistance as an interpreter
and desired to take him back to England as a “curiosity.” Unlike Omai (see Hetherington 2001; Jolly nd b), Tupaia never made it to England; he died en route, in Batavia in December 1770. But some of his extensive knowledge of his island world was passed on as a map. The original drawing was lost, but several copies were made, including the version published in Johann Reinhold Forster’s magnum opus, Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World (Forster 1778; 1996, 304–305). Forster and his son Georg were the naturalists on the second of Cook’s voyages—voyages that generated another cartography of the Pacific, as reflected in a map of the tracks of the sailing ships on Cook’s three voyages. (See figure 2). I juxtapose these two maps to ponder the relationship between indigenous and foreign representations of Oceania and to situate such representations in the changing histories of relations between Pacific peoples and strangers, between Islanders and those who are called (tongue-in-cheek, in an important volume *Borofsky 2000+), “Outlanders.” Indigenous and foreign representations
of the place and its peoples are now not so much separate visions as they are “double visions,” in the sense of both stereoscopy and blurred edges. Foreign knowledges of the Pacific have both used and aspired to eclipse indigenous knowledges, as is obvious from the earliest forms of ethnology in the region.5 Indigenous visions have, since the late eighteenth century, been challenged and partially transformed through encounters with the imagined cartographies of travelers, missionaries, traders, planters, and other agents of colonialism, capitalism, and development. As Tongan scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa has suggested (1994), outsiders’ representations of the Pacific matter not just because of their
geopolitical and discursive hegemony but because Islanders have, in part, come to see themselves through the Outlanders’ lenses. But how far and how do constructs of place and people that emanate from “beyond the horizon” displace local visions? Tupaia’s map is a good example. Though he is the author, this map is not his indigenous view. We will never know the details of that view, but his vision was likely a rather differently “situated knowledge.”6 I suspect it located the observer not soaring high above the islands, powerfully riding on the confident coordinates of longitude and latitude, plotting a changing global position relative to east and west, north and south, but rather lying low in a canoe, looking up at the heavens, scanning the horizon for signs of land, and navigating the powerful seas with the embodied visual, aural, olfactory, and kinesthetic knowledge passed down through generations of Pacific navigators. His knowledge would have been communicated to other Tahitians through
genealogical stories and chants, through the materials of the canoe and the sails, and through the embodied practice of navigation (see Finney 1992; Finney and others 1994; and the film Sacred Vessels [Diaz 1997]).7 Such full-bodied knowledge is here etiolated and converted through the agency of a quill and a piece of parchment into a map. Moreover, the Tahitian names and dispositions of islands are not just written down and graphed as a map, but situated in and saturated by the discursive frame of
“discovery” of Enlightenment voyaging.8