Social Justice Cartography Org: Grassroots Mapping now and in the 1980’s with Mabo vs. Queensland Australia

I’m so fascinated by all these recent developments in the direction of social justice cartography. My last few browser tabs in researching this topic has taken me to Australia, aboriginal rights, more evils of imperialism,  current wonders of social justice cartography and back to here!

So here’s how it all started.

I found an awesome mapping organization, Grassroots Mapping. Woohoo! This group was started  by Jeffrey Warren of the MIT Media Lab’s Design Ecology group and the Center for Future Civic Media. This mapping initiative is based in grassroot efforts to outfit communities with cartographic tools to create their own maps.

So when I found Jeffrey’s site, I noticed how he described Grassroots Mapping as a cartographic practice rooted in social justice. He hopes:  

“to enable a diverse set of alternative agendas and practices, and to emphasize the fundamentally narrative and subjective aspects of mapping over its use as a medium of control.”

After reading Jeffrey’s explicit social justice agenda, I started thinking about how this would’ve been sooo useful back in the late 1980’s when England’s claim to Australia was legally challenged for the first time by Eddie Koiki Mabo in Mabo v Queensland.

Eddie Mabo was a Torres Strait Islander who set out to prove that the Murray Islands of the Torres Straits did not belong to the Queensland Government, but to the Meriam people who were indigenous to the island and had long inhabited it before England showed up to claim the land and try to kill all the aboriginals.

The courts ruled in favor of Eddie Mabo, overturning terra nulius, the principle in which the English used to claim the land in Australia. The court admitted that there was evidence of previous occupation of the land before the English arrived and even more, the concept that “natives” could and did occupy the land. Before this case, there was no “concept” that natives could even own or possibly understand what it meant to possess territory.  

This was a historic case because it was the first time the Australian government admitted that land that they had claimed as theirs, actually belonged to aboriginals. Sadly, Eddie Mabo died before he could witness the ruling which took freaking 10 years!!

Now what I find interesting are the techniques in which Eddie used to win his case. Eddie Mabo led Australian lawyers and justice officials through the Murray Islands, using old, hand drawn maps that showed the bio-vegetation boundaries that outlined the land of the Meriam People. What’s super interesting is that alongside his maps, he also employed cultural practices to make his case, such as explanations about their god, Mabo, song lyrics, dances, diaries, and plant seeds that all proved their ownership over the land, thus their ability as human beings to understand the concept of “ownership.” It’s absolutely fascinating how cartographic justice was employed by Eddie. 

But back in Eddie’s days, GIS was not a tool for the people. I wonder if his court case could have been sped up if he and his lawyers had access to similar tactics being used by Grassroots Mapping. It’s so cool to think about the cartographic legacy that Eddie started with his maps of Murray Island. 

I see social justice cartographic efforts, like Grassroots Mapping, as continuing the legacy of Eddie’s work. So far, they seem to be doing a great job. They’ve initiated a series of “participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute[s]”, with the most recent one in Lima where communities are making use of the maps to make legal claims to their land (as exemplified by the map on the left) Now that is COOL! Their maps are more accurate than Google maps, the communities are actively part of the mapping process (so it’s not like some lame charity redux mapping project), and the communities own the maps when the project is done!

Oh OH OH OH and if you’re in the Bay Area, you can check out Jeffrey’s talk on April 1st at the O’Reilly Where2.0 Conference in San Jose. His talk requires a conference fee, but Jeffrey says that he’s hoping to do a talk/workshop at Wherecamp, which is free. 

Jeffrey - I’m in the Bay Area in April - let’s coordinate our latitudes in real time/space!

Check out their wiki which explains more about their tools. Join their mailing list here.