American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The map is a primary tool in geographic research, and the discipline of geography has experienced a significant methodological transformation during the last three decades with the development and now near ubiquity of geographic information systems (GIS) technology. The introduction of this technology into Indian country has spurred a debate over the appropriateness and effectiveness of using GIS for Native mapping purposes. In this article, I review issues concerning the use of GIS in Native communities and present a case study of one particular tribe’s implementation of the technology. GIS are computer systems designed to store, manipulate, and portray spatial data, theoretically making analysis of such data easier, faster, and more powerful. However, many in the geographic community view GIS as a “contradictory technology that can both empower and marginalize people and communities.” At the same time that broader debates about the social impacts of GIS, public-participation or community-based GIS, and GIS and society developed in urban geographic research, so did a more focused debate centered around GIS and Indigenous peoples. INDIGENOUS GEOGRAPHY AND GIS Major concerns that have been raised about the uncritical use of GIS in Native communities include perpetuation of established power relations through use of the technology, incompatibility between Native geographical knowledge systems and Western cartographic techniques inherent to GIS, and risks associated with storing Indigenous knowledge in digital form. Other concerns are more methodological in nature and include issues of cost and accessibility. First, in the United States, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been instrumental in introducing GIS technology to many reservations. As Rundstrom, Deur, Berry, and Winchell point out, some tribes have curtailed BIA access to their databases because of a deep-seated suspicion of the agency and its historically assimilationist tendencies.