An interactive website is teaching users about the Indigenous people that lived in parts of North America, South America, Africa, and Australia.
The website, created by the Canadian non-profit Native Land Digital, has an interactive, global map that shows Indigenous territories at any given location.Read more: Massachusetts museum returns sacred items to Sioux tribes
By entering an address, city, state, or zip code into their program called Native-Land.ca, users can learn about the Indigenous people that lived in their specific area and abroad. The website provides information about various Indigenous nations, their languages, and other relevant resources.
The non-profit Native Land Digital worked with mapmaking specialists and experts in Indigenous communities to create the map.
Visit the website and type in any address to learn more about the Indigenous territories that lived on the land in the United States and abroad. You can view and use the map here. There are app versions for iOS and Android devices as well.Read more: UMass seeking new seal, ditching unused old emblem with Native American imagery Massachusetts
Indigenous lands in Massachusetts. (Courtesy of Native Land Digital)
Based on the map created by Native Land Digital, viewers can see the tribes that made up Massachusetts pre-colonization. Several tribes were native to the lands, but some of the largest include the Nauset, Wampanoag, Pokanoket, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, Agawam, Mohican, and Massa-adchu-es-et. Many of the tribes are shown with overlapping regions on the map.
Native-Land.ca, the interactive map, was created in 2015 by Victor Temprano, a settler hailing from Okanagan territory, according to the non-profits website. The non-profit was incorporated in 2018.
I am concerned about many of the issues raised by using maps and colonial ways of thinking when it comes to maps, Temprano wrote on the Native-land.ca website. For instance, who has the right to define where a particular territory ends, and another begins? Who should I speak to about such matters, anyway?Read more: Native American Were Still Here exhibit to bridge past and present at Springfield Science Museum
Temprano said the project started because there were a lot of development projects in British Columbia and he wanted to learn more about the territories where projects were taking place.
Some people may be made uncomfortable by the new information and history the map brings forth, the nonprofit wrote on its website. But we are secure in knowing that truth is the best teacher, and we hope to provide the best information we can to help people come to their own conclusions about themselves and their place in the modern world.
