Maps play an indispensable role in indigenous peoples’ efforts to secure land rights in the Americas and beyond. Yet indigenous peoples did not invent participatory mapping techniques on their own; they appropriated them from techniques developed for colonial rule and counterinsurgency campaigns, and refined by anthropologists and geographers. Through a series of historical and contemporary examples from Nicaragua, Canada, and Mexico, this book explores the tension between military applications of participatory mapping and its use for political mobilization and advocacy. The authors analyze the emergence of indigenous territories as spaces defined by a collective way of life--and as a particular kind of battleground.

Product Description: The acclaimed geographer Denis Wood has written numerous books (including the influential bestseller The Power of Maps) that reorient his readers to our neighborhoods, homes and bodies. At the heart of Wood’s investigations is a near-legendary endeavor: the Boylan Heights maps, begun in 1982, and first presented in Everything Sings (2010)...read more

A contemporary follow-up to the groundbreaking Power of Maps, this book takes a fresh look at what maps do, whose interests they serve, and how they can be used in surprising, creative, and radical ways. Denis Wood describes how cartography facilitated the rise of the modern state and how maps continue to embody and project the interests of their creators. He demystifies the hidden assumptions of mapmaking and explores the promises and limitations of diverse counter-mapping practices today. Thought-provoking illustrations include U.S. Geological Survey maps; electoral and transportation maps; and numerous examples of critical cartography, participatory GIS, and map art.

Product Description: Route 66 was the iconic highway of twentieth-century America, stretching from Chicago and Chicago and the Mississippi River basin to Los Angeles and the Pacific coast, and it connected Americans not only physically but also culturally as an enduring symbol found in classic songs, films, television, and pop art...read more

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