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Problematic Polygons: Ethnographically-Informed Cartographic Alternatives for Representing Indigenous Territorial Relations

Brian Thom (Associate Professor) and Rachel Stewart-Dziama (JCURA Undergrad Research Scholar), University of Victoria

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Paper Presented at the joint meetings of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Royal Geographical Society, 14 - 18 September 2020

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BC Treaty Process ‘Statement of Intent’ | National Atlas of Canada

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Franz Boas’ 1887 map (right), redrawn portion (left)

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Suttles’ maps (1951 redrawn) left 1990 (detail, right)

Detail from Suttles’ “Central Coast Salish”, in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 7, 1990. (Smithsonian Institute)

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Thom’s “impossible” map (2009)

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Canada’s map used to deny Hul’qumi’num property rights at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2011)

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The late Willie Seymour (Stz’uminus) and Abraham C. Joe (Cowichan)

“if you had family, there are no boundaries”

“These boundaries have taken away from me the right to access my ancestral lands”

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Kin ties transcend conventional ‘territories’

(Thom 2004 | McHalsie in Carlson 2001)

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Homer Barnett’s (1955) alternative map of territoriality

(original, left | redrawn, right)

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Problematic Polygons cartographic experiment

[live demo]

coming soon to https://www.problematicpolygons.ca/

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Powerful visualization map tools deck.gl

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Powerful visualization map tools deck.gl

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Code sample from deck.gl JavaScript

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Spreadsheet data sample read as JSON by deck.gl

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Problematic Polygons cartographic experiment

[live demo]

coming soon to https://www.problematicpolygons.ca/