Guest Lecturer – Scott Emmons
Historical perspectives of indigenous people
Check out the historical map of depicting wilderness!
http://www3.sympatico.ca/goweezer/canada/can1700.htm
Many Nations existing within what is Canadian borders
Different governing systems for different nations with large areas of land that were associated with nations.
Established relationships (i.e. trade) amongst nations
Transportation routes provide a type of information that can be understood by western culture (i.e. Grease Trail)
Map example from bcadventure – the Grease Trail (or Alexander Mackenzie Trail
http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/explore/cariboo/trails/almack.htm
Within nations governance and movement is defined in a variety of ways
– maternal/paternal
– houses, clans, Kayoh
Locations and naming often associated with caretakers of an area. Names could change with time
Nations have obvious overlaps in geography, families, language and culture
Movement of Europeans into indigestion nations. Examples of coexistence.
Originally not a governing body, but a financial operation with the oldest company in North America (HBC)
– the beginning of resource extraction.
Wiki link on Timelines :
Western rule and governance started to take place, with the western need for European type structure.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canadian_Crown_and_Indigenous_peoples_of_Canada
There were maps all through this time of course, as well as collection of statistics for aboriginal peoples
Colonialization leads to movement of Indigenous people into a western framework.
– little recognition of nations (look at the size of European nations compared to Canada)
– title for land came in the forms of Treaties (even prior to the Royal Proclamation)
– BC a different model with the majority of the area of BC not having a treaty or title
– methods of dispute or land managment was being forced into a Eurotpen model (legislative and common law)
Mapping/Cartography as it is taught follows European history and methods
– therefore land management is based on this model
– the methods of mapping from indigenous perspectives do not follow this western approach
Movement toward the use of western methods to gain/retrieve rights of the use and management of land for indigenous nations
– Court cases and legislative changes (1973 onward – Calder to Trans Mountain)
– many significant cases were brought forward to the supreme court of Canada by BC nations
– changes in legislation (i.e. constitutional and provincial law changes)
– yet the Indian Act still survives
Government (i.e BC Government) methods, terms and conventions are created to abide by common and legislative law
– Traditional Use Studies – and associated methods
– Use and occupancy studies
– Archaeological Assessments
– Strength of claim for evaluation of non-titled or non-treatied nations for resource extraction
Much of the legal activities brought forward by nations has led to adoption of contemporary mapping techniques
– terms such as Traditional Knowledge collection (TK) start to emerge
– Duty to consent (Hiada), Meaningful consultation (Trans Mountain), Free, Prior and informed consent (UNDRIP)
– Title and Rights (Tsilhqot’in and Delgamuukw, Sparrow…)
– Differences between engagement, consultation, accommodation and reconciliation)
– Indigenous groups becoming/are specialists in legal, landuse and cultural frameworks (they use all of them)
Majority of Nations in BC still do not under treaty or title (or they may be involved in treaty review)
Where does this leave us GeoSpatial folks
– mappers
– spatial data managers
– GIS specialists
– spatial data disseminators
Gone are the days of paper maps and transparency overlays
– The need for managing data to be able to retrieve associated and divergent (in other words varied) information by geography
– Presentation of information in a non-GIS framework
– The recognition that points, lines and polygons with attribute tables is not useful for meaningful communication
– Thankfully we have the internet to help out with data management and presentation