Who lived on this land before us?

​Approaching the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and the myth of the "first" dinner with native peoples providing the potluck, we might pause to think about those people who lived, literally everywhere on the continent before settlers arrived.  Let's sit with this thought about the land we have lived on and who lived there before us.
 
The Native Land Digital website is an amazing mapping project and so much more.  While you can explore the maps for a long while, it does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations, it is a work in progress. It's beauty is that the maps and interpretation grows in accuracy and detail with the involvement of native peoples and communities collaborating with GPS and mapping professionals and anthropologists and native historians.  Further, it is beautiful as a learning experience to be shared with friends and family in discussion.
 
Native Land Digital is a Canadian not-for-profit organization, incorporated in December 2018. Native Land Digital is Indigenous led, with an Indigenous Executive Director and Board of Directors who oversee and direct the organization. The maps are most developed for the Americas, Australasia and parts of North Asia.
 
The mission of the project is to create and foster conversations about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, through educational resources such as the map and Territory Acknowledgement Guide. They want to go beyond old ways of talking about Indigenous people and to develop a platform where Indigenous communities can represent themselves and their histories on their own terms. In doing so, Native Land Digital creates spaces where non-Indigenous people can be invited and challenged to learn more about the lands they inhabit, the history of those lands, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together.
 
Action: 
1. Spend time with the map first  Expect an amazing "rabbit hole" of learning!
2. Learn about why it matters  and how it works on their website.
3. Go back to map and imagine with new eyes.