Story 6: Native Lands Map Layers

The native lands map overlay on the “View Items by Map” area was important to us. We wanted people who browsed the website to be able to see local Nations, treaties, and languages in relation to where they uploaded their story from. This is because the land is really important to local nations and visitors to the site might not know which nation is where, the bounds of treaties, or which language is located in which geographical region.

Native Lands Map is a map project that started on the south-western coast of British Columbia, near Vancouver. It came about in 2015 in light of pipeline objections between Nations and the federal, provincial, and municipal governments. It’s first iteration was a map called Pipewatch maps, which was a similar project but to map where pipelines are on Nation’s territories.

Victor Temporano the developer of Pipewatch and thusly Native Lands, realized how big of an endeavour mapping just territory is. So, he decided to focus just on lands, and then eventually languages and treaties. Temporano is non-Indigenous and Native Lands . ca was made by non-Indigenous people for non-Indigenous people.
On our site, there are polygons for areas, and that was just how this map started. It used some of the data from First Peoples Cultural Council under the languages section and then found a tool that allowed them to draw polygons on maps. You can see this now under the map section of Voices of the Land.

Native Land is now overseen by Native Land Digital, an Indigenous lead non-profit. Their goal, per their website, is to “create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing and settler-Indigenous relations.”