Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops: Participatory Mapping in the Amazon
Oct 15th, 2009 by Knut Kitching
This video depicts one element in a web of new responses to Development and globalizing forces represented in social movements and activism around the world. In June of 2008 a group from the Google Earth Outreach program travelled into the Brazilian Amazon. Google Earth Outreach is a program which provides cartographical and visualization resources to non-profits and public benefit organizations. Visiting with several indigenous tribes in the forests of western Brazil, the team taught GPS mapping, video, photography and computer technology skills to groups of villagers. The goal of these instructional sessions was to assist the villagers in creating their own maps of their lands, sacred sites and resources, and thus to help to spatially situate knowledge that has previously existed as oral history, passed from generation to generation. These maps also represent important tools in the fight against intrusions by logging and ranching and may form a key piece of evidence when groups deal with local and federal governments. The satellite imagery associated with Google Earth may allow them to see encroachments on their land, such as deforestation or river discolouration. Thus the maps represent key tools to enhance communication, preserve cultural knowledge, maintain accountability from governments and organizations and empower indigenous groups.
This video address one of the central problems facing social movements across the world, that of how to effectively communicate the message. By using media tools like the internet and GPS groups throughout the Amazon are being connected with the tools to protect their rights and assert themselves as owners or caretakers of the land they live on. These tools allow “scale weaving” and transnational literacy that was previously limited by lack of contact. Groups in the Amazon are able to communicate with governments on their own terms but also with other social movements.
Central also to the power of this movement is its participatory nature. By making maps of their own cultural and ecological knowledge, and doing it themselves, this group has fundamentally made the process (and the results) theirs. Foucault identifies power/knowledge as a foundational element of understanding many of the relationships in the development discourse. Cartography has always been one of the tools of power (and a representation of knowledge), in early lectures we discussed its importance during colonization when the acts of naming and locating sites was part of a process of dominance and subjugation. By spatially situating themselves and their world, these groups in the Amazon are defining themselves and taking control across scales.
The first time I watched this video I was immediately sceptical of those involved; why were they there? how were they impacting the mapping? would this mean Google (in my mind a representation of the omnipotent Western corporation synonymous with Development) owned the rights to the maps? These are questions which I cannot answer but they deserve consideration. Regardless it represents a communication across scales and boundaries, made possible by the technology and knowledge of two very different realities. As we have discussed in class, it is not our place to talk of “giving voice” to Spivak’s subaltern, I prefer to think of this as instead teaching another language.
Check these sites out as well:
- http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-11/ps_amazon#
- http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1114-google_earth-act.html
- http://www.amazonteam.org/index.php/193/Participatory_Ethnographic_Mapping_Mapping_Indigenous_Lands
- http://earth.google.com/outreach/index.html
6 Responses to “Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops: Participatory Mapping in the Amazon”
Fantastic video, thanks for posting it.
I also watched the introductory video for google earth outreach – along with the protecting the Amazon, it helps NGOs map climate change, forest fires, genocide, and more. I think this technology is really power, useful, and empowering for NGOs and the ‘subaltern.’
I love how mapping technologies are connecting place, space, and scale. On google maps I can see the world on a global scale, zoom in to the local, and zoom right back to the global. Plus, I can use the 3D feature to see what the space actually looks like, and use other google technologies to search what kinds of stores, restaurants, etc exist there.
It’s interesting to think that maps, text books, phone books, and video have evolved from being separate entities to one all mixed and intertwined together. I, for one, have a better understanding of the connection and relation between place, space, and scale because of the internet and mapping technologies (GIS, mapquest, googlemaps).
Of course, there are still many parts of the world that are underdeveloped on google maps and underrepresented in google searches. I guess people that have access to internet put content that relates to them on the internet.
“Geography is … the art of war but can also be the art of resistance if there is a counter-map and a counter-strategy.” – Edward Said, The politics of disposession: the struggle for Palestinian self-determination, 1969-1994
Great Video!
I was also a little skeptical and puzzled about this video. I am not sure why Google would be doing what they are with this outreach program, and it seems contradictory to me.
But if we do look at the positive aspects of this movement/project I think it gives voice to these individuals. The point about spatial situating the Amazon natives and there world is what makes this video remarkable. If we are able to map regions where development is taking place in terms of local perspectives, rather than of foreign economic interests this will have a powerful effect on the way that space is perceived.
Evolving technologies are a powerful means of enhancing dialogue between distant peoples. If this is the case, then we must ask if technology allows the subaltern to speak? And if does, then in what ways do they speak, must they conform to western discourse in order to be heard, because it is Western technology? These are complex questions, but the project in this video represents a great attempt at using technology to bring voice to marginalized communities.
A down side I see to this video is that reinforces tokenism. And with the google mapping technology I feel there may be a risk for people to see the indigenous peoples struggle as something superficial and not too serious.
This is really interesting.
I could see this being really helpful in establishing some kind of accountability for illegal forestry practices.
However, I find the little icons used in the program a bit disturbing. Check out 1:28 and 1:47. There’s definitely an “us and them” dynamic going on. At 1:47 there’s the white guy in khakis, bestowing something upon the people in loin cloths holding a bow…? But then when you see the live people, they’re actually wearing shorts. Even then it looks like they’re wearing their traditional garb to please the white benefactor and conform into the role of the victimized native… because a lot of times that is what is expected/demanded of them. I don’t think this is being done intentionally, but reinforcing the romantic stereotype of aboriginal people as “natural, traditional, primitive, exotic, etc.” is rarely helpful.
Do you suppose being made into a sort of caricature is an acceptable cost for being “heard”?
Also, I was wondering if the people are paid for their mapping work. It would make sense for them to be I think, since in a way it’s them performing a cartography service for Google…
I agree, there is absolutely some simplification and caricaturization going on in this. I think that is probably part of the argument for this being development which is not fully decolonized – event though they are speaking for themselves, these aboriginal groups are having to change the way the speak to adapt to our cultural norms (the audience). I think that is part of what has to change in this process of decolonizing development, we have to change the sorts of viewpoints, the types of information and cultural data that we accept as valid and legitimate material.
As far as I know these mapping projects are voluntary affairs where those receiving the technology are not paid and those coming in (in this case Google) do the work ‘pro bono’. I myself am not totally comfortable with this, I understand that in a lot of cases if the technology and materials weren’t donated these things wouldn’t be accessible but I think that as we have discussed this reinforces the hierarchies associated with “good helper” roles and a charitable work. That being said, I also don’t think it is remotely right for the aboriginal groups involved to be paid by Google (or anyone outside their own group) for their mapping work. The whole point of this project and I think a vital part of thinking about it as anti-colonial resistance and decolonization, is thinking about it as work the group is undertaking for themselves, it should benefit them and belong to them entirely – it is fundamentally their cultural knowledge.
But maybe your point is just that if they’re not paid then it is charity. Either way you end up bartering generations of accumulated knowledge for a fee or surrendering your self determination to the moral high-ground which charity work takes. It’s certainly a hard bargain…
“it would be a way of strengthening their culture, preserving their history and sharing their culture with the world”
I think that is a great goal of GoogleEarth Outreach as it really helps the rest of the world with computers/internet to see this community and learn about their culture. But….is this really only beneficial to us (the rest of the world with computers/internet)?
I mean, it is great how the locals are able to share their knowledge and “preserving their history” electronically but how likely is it that they will have access to this stored knowledge? In addition, other similar cultures will also not have access to this knowledge.
And like someone mentioned above, it also simplifies their culture more for someone in the opposite end of the world. It gives the viewer only a glimpse of their culture and most most likely only the “interesting points” (as seen at 2:23) that the Outreach program has dub to the developed world what is interesting….Thus, some people may only see and think of the culture as this one, superficial, surface way and think that there is all that to the culture…which may not be that beneficial in the end.
I do think this is a great initiative…however, it may skew people’s perspective of the culture.