Such projects extend beyond the academy as technology

Such projects extend beyond the academy as technology amplifies previously unheard voices and dissent and, to borrow an old postcolonial phrase, rewrites the empire, or, in this case, rewrites it. This is the intent of the online project Native Land, an interactive site that Atlas Obscura says is the opposite of secular colonial cartography, eliminating land and state boundaries to illuminate the complex network of historical and contemporary indigenous territories, treaties and languages spanning the United States, Canada, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland and Australia. Temprano makes no claim to definitive historical accuracy, but points to other similar projects that fill gaps in “his” own online map, such as the vast expanses of South America redrawn in situ by Amazonian tribes, who collect data on the ground using smartphones, and Aaron Capellas’ tribal people maps, which are an attractive printed book perfect for classroom use. After discovery by Europeans, writes historian Michel-Rolf Trouillot, after classification, cartography, and slavery, the Other finally appears in the human world. For several decades, postcolonial projects have sought a gradual disenchantment with this idea, a recognition of the interdependent relationship between naming, mapping and power, and a return, as far as possible, to the names, boundaries and identities behind erased history. Visit the Native Land site and enter an address in North America, South America, or Australia to learn more about Native peoples’ past and present, their languages, and the historical treaties signed and broken over the centuries. By clicking on each indigenous area, you will find links to other informative sites and can make adjustments to improve the accuracy of this global project. At a time when neocolonial projects such as pipelines are threatening the survival of indigenous communities again, and when indigenous people and their children are being imprisoned for crossing paramilitary land borders, these issues could not be more relevant. He would urge people, indigenous and non-indigenous, to remember that the land was once a vast territory inhabited by autonomous indigenous peoples who gave it different names according to their language and geography. Brown notes that the materials used to make maps, charts, and globes contributed to their destruction. Paper burns, rots, is exposed to water and insects.