Mapping Traditional Knowledge: Digital Cartography in the Canadian North

Abstract

Digital cartography offers exciting opportunities for recording indigenous knowledge, particularly in contexts where a people's relationship to the land has high cultural significance. Canada's north offers a useful case study of both the opportunities and challenges of such projects. Through the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC), Inuit peoples have been invited to become partners in innovative digital mapping projects, including creating atlases of traditional place names, recording the patterns and movement of sea ice, and recording previously uncharted and often shifting traditional routes over ice and tundra. Such projects have generated interest in local communities because of their potential to record and preserve traditional knowledge and because they offer an attractive visual and multimedia interface that can address linguistic and cultural concerns. But given corporations' growing interest in the natural resources of the Arctic and the concomitant rise in government concern about claims to Arctic sovereignty, such maps may also be of interest to a broad range of actors and for a variety of purposes. Because these projects rely heavily upon, and record, oral knowledge, and because they convert such knowledge into highly malleable and easily disseminated digital content, they raise challenging issues around informed consent, intellectual and cultural property, and privacy. This article identifies and examines these issues and describes the collaborative and interdisciplinary research established to identify and address the use of traditional knowledge in digital cartography. RÉSUMÉLa cartographie numérique offre des possibilités intéressantes pour consigner le savoir autochtone, particulièrement dans les contextes où le rapport entre la personne et la terre a une grande importance culturelle. Le nord du Canada offre une étude de cas utile à la fois des possibilités et des défis que présentent de tels projets. Par l'entremise du Centre de recherches en géomatique et cartographie (CRGC), des Inuits ont été invités à devenir partenaires de projets innovateurs de cartographie numérique, qui visent notamment à créer des atlas de noms d'endroits traditionnels, à consigner les tendances et le mouvement des glaces maritimes et à consigner les itinéraires traditionnels non cartographiés et souvent changeants sur la glace et la toundra. De tels projets ont suscité de l'intérêt dans les communautés locales parce qu'ils offrent des possibilités de consigner et de préserver le savoir ancestral et aussi une interface visuelle et multimédiatique attrayante qui peut tenir compte des préoccupations linguistiques et culturelles. Comme les entreprises s'intéressent de plus en plus aux ressources naturelles de l'Arctique et étant donné la montée concomitante des préoccupations du gouvernement au sujet des revendications relatives à la souveraineté dans l'Arctique, de telles cartes peuvent aussi intéresser un vaste éventail d'intervenants pour toutes sortes de raisons. Comme ces projets comptent énormément sur...

From felt tip to technology: the challenges of representing traditional knowledge in a GIS platform to create a knowledge surface

“…Traditional knowledge (TK) is the key to survival for Inuit in the Canadian Arctic (Duerden, et al, 1996;Engler, et al, 2013;Freeman, et al, 2005;McGregor, 2004). This survival is nested in the relationship the Inuit have with the environment; the wildlife, land, sea, and ice and is the basis of TK (Engler, et al, 2013;Freeman, et al, 2005;Pearce, et al, 2011;McGregor, 2004;Duerden, et al, 1996;Berkes and Berkes, 2007). There is a myriad of definitions of traditional knowledge, but there are common threads to define TK in an Inuit context.…”

“…Through an oral manner, the knowledge is passed from Elders to the younger generation and from community to community. Furthermore, human interaction and long-term direct experience are the fundamental processes that are the building blocks of TK (Engler, et al, 2013;Pulsifer, et al, 2011;Freeman, et al, 2000;Pearce, et al, 2011). This intimate knowledge of the landscape creates mental maps that are the crucial to understanding the environment (Freeman, et al, 2000, Pearce 2011).…”

The Northern Voice: Listening to Indigenous and Northern Perspectives on Management of Data in Canada

“…Two specific examples of such research projects are the Atlas of Inuit Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (Siku Atlas; Pulsifer et al 2011), and the use of digital cartography in the Canadian north (Engler, Scassa & Taylor 2013). These relationships and the input gained from IK are crucial to provide data and information for decision making at different levels.…”

“…A number of northern and Indigenous communities are interested in preserving Indigenous Knowledge (IK; Engler, Scassa & Taylor 2013;Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami 2016;Scassa & Taylor 2013;Pearce et al 2009;Pulsifer et al 2011). IK is a ' cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs, handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment' (Scassa & Taylor 2017: 2).…”

Investigating the Potential of Tabletop Natural User Interfaces Tools in Improving the Nunaliit Cybercartographic Atlas Framework

“…The main products of the Nunaliit framework are its cybercartographic atlases, such as Homelessness, Living Indigenous Knowledge, Kitikmeot, Canadian Trade with the World and the Antarctica atlas. A cybercartographic atlas is different from the traditional concept of an atlas, offering itself as a kind of metaphor for diverse quantitative and qualitative data sets, which are linked by location and presented in a variety of new ways Taylor 2013, Taylor andPyne 2010;Pyne and Taylor 2012).…”