Counter-mapping is a term attributed to Nancy Peluso (1995), who wrote about the production of maps by Indigenous forest users in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to tell their own narratives of place and to push back against hegemonic definitions of land.  Although almost three decades have passed, and counter-mapping efforts have evolved with changing technology and new socio-political contexts, many of the objectives outlined in Peluso’s article endure today:

The goal of these efforts is to appropriate the state’s techniques and manner of representation to bolster the legitimacy of “customary” claims to resources. The practical effect is far-reaching: the use of maps and a highly “territorialized” strategy redefines and reinvents customary claims to standing forest resources and harvestable products as claims to the land itself.

Counter-mapping as a critical practice has largely developed through political-environmental struggles regarding the (primarily colonial) extraction of natural resources and resulting efforts of conservation (Harris and Hazen, 2005). As such, counter-mapping is often engaged in grassroots organizing as a form of action against the colonial dispossession of land, living beings, and cultural heritage. Objectives of counter-mapping vary widely and can include policy change, legal (re-)claims to land, education, and cultural revitalization, among others. Counter-mapping therefore harnesses what Edward Said describes as the “cartographic impulse” of anticolonial resistance; that is, “to reclaim, rename, and reinhabit the land” (1994: 272-3).

Counter-mapping is also a practice that challenges what counts as “authoritative” knowledge. According to Amber Bosse (2021), who situates it within a larger framework of collaborative cartography, counter-mapping has largely been fueled by two factors: first, the recognition that spatial data is an important part of small- and large-scale decision-making processes; and secondly, that “spatial information has historically been collected, curated, and disseminated by and for a small segment of the population.” Counter-mapping shares many of the same approaches as participatory, community-based, or collaborative mapping in that they all tend to invite participation from people who might not consider themselves (or be considered) cartographers (Iralu, 2021).

As “cartographic work created in opposition to colonial cartography” (Iralu, 2021), counter-mapping is a political and educational endeavour and is practiced widely across diverse post-colonial, anti-colonial, and de-colonial contexts. It is not limited to Indigenous groups and it is important to recognize that counter-mapping varies considerably across heterogenous Indigenous communities. Furthermore, as Dallas Hunt and Shaun Stevenson (2017) remind readers, Indigenous (counter-)mapping has a rich history that predates colonial and digital mapping; however, it has indeed taken on new forms by the incorporation of digital tools and techniques. Acknowledging all the above intricacies, they highlight how Indigenous mapping has been positioned in the current settler colonial moment:

For the purposes of this paper, and within our current settler colonial moment, we consider Indigenous mapping, in a general sense, as those processes through which Indigenous peoples articulate their presence on and right to defend their ancestral lands, territories and resources against state encroachment, an encroachment which always already occurs within the colonial framework and language of mapping, and which always positions Indigenous presence as that which it must counter. (376)

Other scholars point to different forms of spatial – and spatializing – media, such as photography and visual art. Writing about Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann’s photomontage work, geographer Nalini Mohabir refers to counter-mapping as “mapping by those who are marginalized, and historically seen as insufficiently capable of scientific truth.” This type of mapping comes out of a response of “disenchantment with the continuities of colonial legacies” that demands a reinterpretation of those legacies.  Drawing on disenchantment as a metaphor, Mohabir suggests, “offers alternative representations of place invisible to the gaze of colonial power” (264).

There are many other poignant examples of counter-mapping, or alternative conceptions of mapping that disrupt colonial cartographic power, and we share a list of projects later in this module. We now turn to highlight one specific example of Indigenous mapping, the Zuni Map Art Project (also known as the A:shiwi A:wan Museum Map Art Project) to examine some of the possibilities and challenges with counter-mapping.

Example: Zuni Map Art Project

The Zuni Map Art Project is perhaps one of the most-cited examples of Indigenous counter-mapping, in part because it was one of the earliest initiatives that used the language of counter-mapping. It also illustrates what Elspeth Iralu describes as a “Zuni practice of and for spatial justice” (2021: 1496).

A brief note before we proceed:

Beyond sharing general information and quotations about the project, we (the settler authors of this module) recognize that these are not our stories to tell, and we have decided not to post images of the visual archives (which include Zuni maps, photographs, paintings, and other media) here for that reason. Instead, we direct students to visit the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center to view the Zuni Map Art Project as told by Zuni community members. Please also visit the required readings and links outlining the project, which include a short video featuring Jim Enote, Zuni farmer and former director of the museum. We will proceed with the module assuming students have engaged with the material.

Zuni Pueblo is an Indigenous nation in the northwest part of what is now called New Mexico. Initiated by the A:shiwi A:wan Museum, the Map Art Project “is an art, language and place name project all in one”(A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, 2015). As the museum website elaborates:

A:shiwi Map Art is a collective, revisionist effort to elaborate Zuni history and cultural survival independent from the non-Zuni narrative, using Zuni language and Zuni aesthetics and sensibilities. These maps help us understand where we came from and why Zuni culture is associated with places far away from our reservation. They also harness the capacity of visual art to communicate the importance of Zuni cultural landscape in perpetuation of community vitality and values. Finally, as tools that help set the record straight, these maps serve as a means to mutual understanding by asserting that we live in a world with diverse ways of knowing.

In “Counter Mapping,” a short film about the project, Jim Enote (Zuni farmer and former director at A:shiwi A:wan Museum) explains that Zuni maps have memory. These maps, he says, holds ancestral knowledge in conversation with other knowledges that “helps a family or a group to start speaking about places, to start learning from each other and start talking about places in a way that’s uniquely Zuni” (Loften and Vaughn-Lee, 2019). In a companion piece for Emergence Magazine, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder (2018) writes:

The Zuni maps are an effort to orient the Zuni people, not just to their place within the landscape, but to their identity, history, and culture. The maps contain a powerful message: you have a place here, we have long traveled here, here is why this place is important. Through color, relationship, and story, the maps provide directions on how to return home.

Maps that were created for a specific purpose often take on new meanings and mobilizations.  In these instances, counter-mapping moves beyond paper and digital maps, often getting incorporated into larger platforms like project and community websites, web-based storymaps, art galleries, and museum installations. Jim Enote added that maps originally intended to teach migration history have been hung in Zuni community members’ homes as art (Steinauer-Scudder, 2018). All of these outputs extend the power of counter-mapping into new and perhaps more accessible or culturally meaningful spaces. As we discuss in the next section, Indigenous counter-maps also provide a sense of familiarity and re-orientation with home through the return to ancestral language.