Mapping
In the words of First Peoples Worldwide consultant Peter Poole, a cartographer working exclusively in Indigenous communities, "Indigenous Peoples are using maps to rename and reclaim their lands. Their maps remain instruments of power, but a creative and restorative power..."
As conservationists have joined governments and corporations in driving Indigenous Peoples from their lands, often in order to create "protected areas" for purposes of environmental tourism and/or asset-stripping, maps have become critical instruments for proving Indigenous land tenure, demarcating ancestral territory, negotiating claims and managing assets. For the first time, Indigenous Peoples are beginning to repatriate information about their territories through data collection and sketch-mapping, compile it in precise computerized maps, and press claims based on them. Tenure mapping tells of their past on the land; asset mapping prepares them to control and manage their territorial assets in the future. Both genres of mapping are increasingly prevalent in Indigenous communities worldwide.
In addition, computerized mapping provides global overviews of Indigenous Peoples, their territories, and the resources found on them. The results show that Indigenous Peoples inhabit more than 85 percent of the earth’s protected areas; their territories span most of the last remaining, biodiversity-rich, conservation priority areas of the new century; and they maintain traditional land claims on 18 to 24 percent of the earth’s land surface. They possess established interests in numerous marine areas as well.
Indigenous communities have substantially increased their own investments in conservation over the past decade, not in most cases because they can afford it readily, but because they know they will have no resources whatsoever if they don’t protect their environments. Conservationists, governments and corporations also know that Indigenous territories harbor enormous natural resources, the more so in that Indigenous Peoples have proved good caretakers of the Earth.
A significant proportion of the Indigenous investment in conservation has gone into mapping. By demarcating their territory and its assets, Indigenous Peoples can protect the productivity of their territory from asset-stripping and outright plunder by others.
First Peoples Worldwide has produced a series of maps demonstrating Indigenous tenure in resource-rich, conservation priority eco-regions.
A series of maps recently produced for First Peoples Worldwide by Peter Poole can be viewed at the following sites.
Map 1 The approximate population of Indigenous Peoples by continents and regions of the world [2Mg Download]
Map 2 Sites of Interest to Resource Industries and Conservation [5Mg Download]
Map 3 Progress of secure territorial tenure for Indigenous Peoples on every continent over 60 years [8Mg Download]
Map 4 Estimated chance of Indigenous Peoples for security of tenure on every continent today [5Mg Download]
Map 5 Biodiversity Hotspots, Critical Habitats, and Conservation Refugees on every continent [5Mg Download]
A map of Africa locates the Indigenous Peoples on the African continent, where they are often said not to exist at all [2Mg Download]
The mapping of Indigenous presence on planet Earth is a work in progress, necessarily involving subjective judgment and partial knowledge. In the effort to improve our maps, First Peoples Worldwide welcomes additional information from any corner of the world. Comments, ideas and updates can be sent to info@firstpeoplesworldwide.org.
Mapping Indigenous presence. Indigenous Peoples are beginning to repatriate information about their territories through data collection and sketch-mapping, compile it in precise computerized maps, and press claims based on them... [Online Article]
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First Peoples Worldwide
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