Localizing landscapes: a call for respectful design in Indigenous counter mapping

Abstract

The increasing use of digital platforms (for example geo referencing, Indigenous counter mapping) to capture Australian Indigenous culture risks adopting tools ontologically based in settler colonial cartographies and thus, unwittingly, can recreate a universal view of empire. Platforms are never neutral spaces and globalized narratives continue to diminish local ontologies. Respectful design of future counter mapping could be based inside local ontologies and epistemologies of differing cultural groups. Respect is shown in engaging with local communities and privileging Indigenous mapping processes. Such engagement would aim to develop counter mapping practices incorporating the principles guarded by the Elders and the protocols by which knowledge itself may be communicated. This paper seeks to demonstrate the different methods by which such respect may be practiced and an approach which emphasizes collaboration and deep listening. Such methods and approach allow for emerging digital landscapes (counter maps) that respect, value, and protect the local epistemological and ontological sources of Indigenous Knowledge.