Indigenous Cartography: How Amazonian Communities Use Maps to Safeguard Their Land

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Rivers with a yellowish hue, a greenish-blue jungle, reddish animals… The maps created by the Indigenous people of the Brazilian state of Acre are not mere geographical representations. They identify and name, in different languages, places, rivers, lakes, beaches, mountains, swamps, wildlife refuges, archaeological sites, cultural spaces, or spiritual corners. Often, these maps are accompanied by decorative adornments and symbolic elements.

Since the Pro-Indigenous Commission of Acre (CPI-Acre), a historic civil society organization, launched its project An Experience of Authorship in 1983, Indigenous cartography has gained substance. What began as a pilot experience to train Indigenous teachers in geography eventually developed into a discipline that transcended the Western conception of maps. The courses held in Rio Branco, the capital of Acre, led to fieldwork in twenty-four Indigenous lands and prompted the establishment of the Indigenous Agroforestry Agents, the true cartographers of the territory, in 1996.

“Indigenous Cartography primarily aims to identify, map, reflect, classify, plan, and discuss areas for the use, management, and conservation of natural and agroforestry resources,” says Renato Gavazzi, educational coordinator in the training of Agroforestry Agents at CPI-Acre and curator of the exhibition Indigenous Cartographies: Decolonizing Mind and Space, which can be visited until July 18 at the Casa de América Catalunya in Barcelona.

By creating maps, the Huni Kuǐ, Yawanawa, Jaminawa, Katukina, Puyanawa, Shawãnawa, Shanedawa, Manchineru, and Ashaninka peoples transformed a colonial tool of conquest into a means of control over their own territory. “A map written in an Indigenous language rather than in the language of the colonizer is an ethnic and political mark of valorization of culture and minority languages. It is a way to decolonize ideologies of oppression,” notes Gavazzi.

Mix of Symbolic Universes

The Indigenous cartography project began with the handcrafting of “mental maps.” “We began to create maps of spaces as places of life, maps made up of stars, the sky, the moon, the jungle, animals, humans, and non-humans,” states Gavazzi. Gradually, the maps incorporated elements of so-called ethnographic cartography and some from Western cartography. For example, they use cardinal points and a compass rose to facilitate the interpretation of official maps by Indigenous peoples.

Siã Shanenawa, one of the Indigenous Agroforestry Agents of the project, emphasizes the educational aspect of Indigenous cartography: “The importance of the maps produced on Indigenous lands is great because we take them to schools. We teach children and young people about our territory.” Indigenous maps are constructed participatively. First, elders are consulted. After recognizing the elements that make up the territory, the Indigenous people configure the scale of their lands based on a different relationship between space and time: for each map, it is defined whether one centimeter equals an hour, two hours, or a day’s walk. The maps also document traditional Indigenous orientation points such as west and east, water courses, stars, and other elements of nature. Then, through much collective debate, additional information is added: natural resources, agricultural spaces, fishing locations, environmental management plans, ritual spaces, environmental conflicts, invasions…

The Indigenous cartography of Acre also works with satellite images, georeferenced maps, and GPS devices. The use of these technologies helps Indigenous populations combat the constant invasions of their reserves. For example, the maps created by the Ashaninka in the ethnic mapping workshops of 2004 were a fine diagnostic of how invasions were occurring by Peruvians in the Kampa Indigenous Land of the Amônia River, which spans 87,205 hectares and borders Peru.

At other times, cartography serves as a tool for the official demarcation of new Indigenous lands. “A map where the dividing lines were igarapés (small watercourses) was an instrument for discussions held in Brasília for the delineation process of the Kaxinawa Indigenous Land of Praia do Carapanã, demarcated in 2000,” specifies Gavazzi. The use of Indigenous maps was also fundamental in resolving the conflict between the Brazilian government and the Huni Kuī regarding the presence of uncontacted Indigenous people in their territory.

The new maps of Acre and its Indigenous Forest Agents inspired experiences in other regions of Brazil. The most recent replication of the project occurred with the Maxakali people (Tikmũ’ũn) in the state of Minas Gerais.

Maps of the Future

The Indigenous maps of Acre “do not speak of a conquered territory or one about to be conquered, but of one that wants to be cared for and protected,” writes Marta Nins i Camps, director of Casa América Catalunya, in the exhibition catalog. They are maps that evoke emotion, foster connection, and raise awareness. Maps that mediate, that negotiate. Open maps that build community. Cartography is an exercise in gathering knowledge, producing symbols, and artistic expression. It is a language that expresses the relationships between territory, landscape, and writing. “Indigenous maps are not static. They are not finished products, but the result of a continuous dialogue process involving Indigenous peoples, their advisors, their neighbors, and the Brazilian state itself,” affirms Gavazzi.

In 2004, during an ethnic mapping workshop held in the Kampa Indigenous Land of the Amônia River, Moises Pianko, one of the Ashaninka leaders, communicated to his people the need to embrace the cartographic path: “We will never return to our previous normality. Only if we sent all these people away and returned to the place they cannot even reach. But then we would have to erase all the maps of the world.” Between erasing maps or creating new ones, the Ashaninka, along with the other ethnic groups in the region, chose to redraw their geography.

Indigenous maps unite aesthetics and politics. The map recognizes cultures and delineates territory. Many of these maps are included in the work journals of the Indigenous Agroforestry Agents. “As if they were the current scribes of the forest, they reveal to us writers, cartographers, narrators, poets, farmers establishing new futures, recreating different ways of thinking about conceptions of the world and life through the practice of writing, maps, and the arts,” writes Gavazzi in the exhibition catalog.

Although Indigenous peoples collaborated centuries ago with Jesuits, travelers, chroniclers, scientists, and geographers like Alexandre Von Humboldt in creating maps, they remained decorative figures in official history. Colonizers ensured the erasure, concealment, and silencing of the ethnographic representations of Indigenous peoples.

The new maps of Acre, in addition to doing poetic justice to the cartographic memory of Latin America, contain, for Gavazzi, another possible future: “Maps are but dreams of a different future, symbolic images of hope for a fairer, more plural, and inclusive country.”