We also work to add more areas to the map over time — this isn’t a ‘finished’ project.
Will you be releasing more info about your research methods and pedagogical theory? Really interested to know more about how you make the sausage.
Also, wrt to Africa specifically, I do remember when I was doing history grad school about 10 years ago that one of the more provocative hypotheses at the time was that some or all tribes may be colonial constructs. Curious if you've engaged with that hypothesis, and more generally how you're going about mapping territories in Africa.
Great work, and I hope that you persevere and not let the haters get to you.
P.S.: Are you looking for any volunteers? I do full-stack web dev and have experience w/ Mapbox.
The BC Treaty Commission has a website with a map showing them at their various stages: https://www.bctreaty.ca/
Is land a place of our ancestors? Is land something spiritual? Is our land defined by where we know the plants and animals and mountains? Is it something we can own, or never own in any way? How do we draw borders over history when borders shift? These are all interesting and great questions. Chew on them.
There are plenty of news stories out there if you want to read more about the early goals of the map, but essentially it was about education. This isn't trying to be a legal or academic resource -- it's not an attempt to map an "accurate" picture of Indigenous lands before colonization or anything like that. It's not depicting a particular year, either.
Increasingly, our goal is first of all to map Indigenous people according to their own conception of traditional territories. We don't mind overlaps and we don't mind being "wrong", since a lot of times this whole concept of traditional territory is difficult to pin down. Our goal is to have Indigenous folks look at the map and see themselves represented.
Everyone pointing out the blankness of Europe, Africa, and much of Asia are totally right to do so. This blankness is due to 1) a lack of resources. This was a volunteer project by myself alone for years, and it was hard enough to put together the dataset and then try to manage fixes for North America, let alone engaging with all the complexities of the entire world and all the histories and differences contained there. There's thousands of shapes on the map, and messing any of them up can have serious consequences for people. Then, 2) because it takes a lot of understanding and expertise to even attempt to map parts of the world where we don't have deep connections and knowledge. We can't just run roughshod into Africa and Asia and start mapping random ethnic groups when we know so little. Those connections take time to build. We have gotten caught up in trying to improve and add places where we are more able to define Indigenous, but it doesn't mean we think there are no Indigenous people in other places. It just means we are going to take longer to understand those places and we'd rather do it well than do it quickly. And 3), ensuring we are focusing on the right things. We aren't necessarily trying to get the whole world done and then be like "we're done! let's wrap up!", but rather to have the map and website managed by Indigenous people who can direct things in a good way for the long term. Which may mean focusing on capacity building more than map expansion, at times.
We really welcome fixes, thoughts, anger, and everything you have to direct our way -- don't hesitate to contact us. We are also really into building relationships with other interested organizations. This is very likely a project that will take many years to come to improve, and we are really driven to make something that is meaningful and valuable to Indigenous people. Again, we have no desire to be an academic or legal resource, and regarding this as such is misunderstanding the project.
Finally -- the data is totally open and available! Just check out our API page in the Resources section. But try to use the data in a way that understands how it's going to constantly shift, might be totally wrong, and is often not verified directly by communities.
Thanks everyone for the discussion!