Comparative Study of Death

Native American Map Making

I. Human relationships with land are rooted in culture
  A. Interactions with land mediated by values, norms, assumptions, and symbols
  B. Map: "representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world."
  C. All map making traditions require cultural familiarity
  D. Contemporary importance of Native map making in land claims

II. Pre-Columbian Native Cartography
  A. Part of much broader oral and pictographic traditions
  B. Made and used in a wide range of indigenous contexts
  C. Not constructed according to linear or angular metrics
  D. Pictures of experience
  E. Rarely created as permanent documents
  F. Most pre-Columbian and early colonial maps not known first hand
  G. Encounter maps adapted to new experiences

III. Types and examples of Native conceptual maps
  A. Daily maps (Comanche)
  B. Gesture maps (Pookmoosh Band of Micmac)
  C. Message maps (Ojibwa, Passamaquoddy)
  D. Dream maps (Dunne-Za or Beaver)
  E. Star maps (Pawnee)
  F. Winter counts (Yanktonai Dakota)
  G. Tattoo maps (Osage)
  H. Petroglyph (Shoshone?)
  I. Lineage histories and local maps (Aztec)
  J. Other worlds (Maya)
  K. Sacred sites (Lakota)
  L. Battle histories (Ojibwa, Cheyenne)
  M. Event histories (Quapaw, Delaware)
  N. Treaty gift exchange (Catawba)
  O. Land transaction (Kaskaskia, Wea, Piankashaw?)
  P. Reconnaissance map (Aztec, Pueblo)
  Q. Resource for non-Native maps (Blackfoot)
  R. Land claims (Iowa, Zuni)
  S. Commercial art (Inuit, Navajo)
  T. Bioregional mapping (Inuit, Navajo, Anishinawbeg)
  U. Native GIS (Inuit, Dunne-Za, Nisga'a)
 

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