Shift Indian Country’s Changing Landscape:

Decolonial Data-Visualizations.

Wayne Booth Marci

Digital Arts and New Media, Master of Fine Arts candidate

University of California, Santa Cruz ­ 2015

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Pretext Before beginning to apply experience, theory, and scholarly research to the culmination of two years worth of decolonial research, practice, and data­art, I’d like to thank those who have shaped this journey; my thesis committee, Sharon Daniel, Beth Rose Middleton, Abel Rodriguez, and Helen and Newton Harrison. The Bishop Paiute Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Raymond Andrews (Bishop Paiute), Washoe language teacher, Herman Fillmore (Washoe), my friends, Cecily Rose (Yankton), Sinte Numpa (Lakota), Mario Perez and Abby Mora, my mothers Brenda Booth and Jill Marci, my significant other, Paulette Hernandez, and my best friend, my dog, Bagel. Without them, I could not have begun to create the project. The research and work that follows is not intended to come from the point of view of an indigenous person. I am aware that I cannot interpret history or anything for that matter through the eyes of an indigenous person. I was raised in the colonial world and I do not know the traditions. I am an ally. I am studying this work with deep respect, and have honor in contributing to the narrative landscape of decolonization. Therefore, all of the work and research is highly objective, statistical, and factual as not to romanticize nor assume an indigenous perspective. Introduction

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles of racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.”

­­Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Between 1622 and 1923, the indigenous people of the area now known as the

United States, fought and resisted over two hundred wars, battles, and massacres.

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Between 1776 and 1887, the United States government and its citizens colonized and

seized over one and a half billion acres from the indigenous people. Between 1778 and

1883 the indigenous people were a part of over four hundred treaties that were ultimately

broken by the United States government. Despite these facts of genocide, imperialism,

and colonization, there are five hundred and seventy two federally recognized tribes

today; five hundred and seventy two examples of survival, not counting tribes recognized

by only the state government or the unrecognized or terminated tribes. A tribe’s

existence is not dependent upon the government however. “Federal recognition does not

create tribes, but rather recognizes social/political entities that predate the United States.”

(Goldberg & Champagne, 2002) There are more than fifty­five tribes in California that

remain unrecognized. That is over 80,000 people whose cultures and histories aren’t

recognized. These statistics are paramount to an accurate or truly representative

indigenous historiography and such a historiography has many components­­linguistic,

cultural, archival, geographic, and scientific. Given these facts, we must ask ourselves,

‘what is American history?’ ‘what is historiography?’ ‘what is colonization?’ and,

therefore, ‘what is decolonization?’

We are all familiar with the canon of American history and therefore, loosely,

with the concept of colonization, but what may be unfamiliar is the concept(s) of

decolonization. As Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith argue in Theorizing Native Studies,

“North America was brought into being as a nation­state under conditions of Native

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elimination, African enslavement, and an ongoing structure of capitalist accumulation

that seems unaware of its bodily and ecological consequences”. Native elimination,

African enslavement, and capitalism are colonialist legacies that the U.S. government’s

structure is built upon. Decolonialism is the undoing of these structures. In order to fully

realize the decolonial, we need to know what was colonized.

Colonization

All of us, for the most part, have some inclination of the genocidal history of

American colonialism, but most don’t know the extent. In what is now the Americas,

colonization of indigenous lands caused peoples and their cultures to be disturbed and

displaced, often violently, from their homelands. In the United States, this led to the

creation of the geographical and socio­political spaces now known as Indian Country. 1

The ethos that served as the justification for this violent colonial expansion was

manifest destiny. However, another term for that ethos might also be genocide. As

Waziyatawin states in What Does Justice Look Like?, the United Nations (UN)

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) set

international standards for determining what constitutes genocide in Article II, which

1 Indian country is defined at 18 U.S.C. § 1151 as: all land within the limits of any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States Government, notwithstanding the issuance of any patent, and, including rights­of­way running through the reservation;

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states: "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in

whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about

its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." The United States government and its citizens in the nineteenth and twentieth

century violated all of these criteria against the indigenous peoples in the name of

manifest destiny, and through the forces of war, genocide, forced removal, and

concentration camps (reservations), demarcation was made, and the colonial legacy

created Indian Country.

These demarcations aren’t only comprised of Native concentration camps

(reservations) however. Town, county, city, and state lines were also formed and

demarcated. Borders of people and places were created. I have spent every summer of my

adolescent life living with my mother amongst the vast prairies in and around Vivian,

South Dakota, 20 miles east from Lower Brule Indian reservation, 30 miles north of

Rosebud Sioux reservation, and 100 miles west of Pine Ridge reservation. The

unrestrained lighting, thunderstorms, and rolling prairie hills, are entities that cannot be

demarcated. Yet, in our geo/socio­political world of borders, they indeed have become

encapsulated. To imagine borders amongst the land, the prairie hills, the spires amongst

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the beautiful and sacred Ȟesápa (Black Hills ) is inconceivable, but the borders are there 2

now, and although they are seemingly invisible, they are very real. All of these borders,

the borders that make up each state, county, city, and street are products of the colonial

legacy. Of course indigenous peoples had their own regions and territories too, but these

were not the imposed and violent borders that demarcate space today.

Decolonization

Recognition of the colonial legacy of genocide practiced by and on behalf of the

United States government is one step toward the decolonial. Native (Dakota) scholar,

Waziyatawin defines decolonization as “the intelligent, calculated, and active resistance

to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and exploitation of our minds,

bodies, and lands.” (Waziyatawin, 2008) Therefore, in order to conceptualize or perform

decolonization or the idea(s) of decolonialism, one must know what colonization is and

was. For example when tribal governments “adopt the European­Western ideology of

sovereignty [they are] buttressing the imposed alien authority structure within its

communities, and [are] is legitimizing the associated hierarchy”. (Alfred, 2003) When the

colonizer’s governmental system is adopted over the original indigenous governmental

system, a continuation of colonialism occurs. When the colonizer’s language is adopted

over the original indigenous language colonialism is also continued. Many ideas and

2 New Lakota Dictionary online translator. http://www.lakotadictionary.org/

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concepts simply can’t be translated in to the english language, therefore the linguistic

aspect of colonization is paramount. If people can’t understand their own language, how

will they understand their people's original ideas of governance or culture? There were

over three hundred languages in North America pre­contact. Currently there are only two

hundred and ten of those languages still spoken. “About 175 of the 210 languages are

spoken in the United States; the other 35 are in only Canada. Out of those 175 languages

in the United States, only about 20, or eleven percent, are still being learned by children

from their parents and elders in the traditional way. “ (Krauss, 2007) The question is how

long will these languages survive? Tribes throughout the world are making strides in

counteracting the imposed learning of the english language or the colonizers language

Personally, I know the Washoe (Herman Fillmore) and Bishop Paiute have strong

language teachers. By understanding the colonial legacy of genocide, forced­removal,

indoctrination, and damnation of culture (language included) we can begin to think about

what was colonized and therefore how to decolonize it.

Historiography

Historiography or the writing of history is not singular, history is a multi­threaded

temporal discussion dependent upon who tells it. The California gold rush, from a

miner’s perspective might be a tale of perseverance, opportunity, and glory. The gold

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rush, from an indigenous perspective might be a story of genocide and imperialism. And

to expand, a history told by the indigenous people and a history told about the indigenous

people are different. The study of American history is often biased and one­sided. There

are fundamental problems with the way that Native history is taught and integrated into

the mainstream history in the U.S. James Luna, Native artist said in News from Native

California while discussing the three­hundred­year commemoration of Junipero Serra

“and if I may quote Ms. Lindsie Bear, ‘It is not what they said, but what they didn’t’”. As

a 4th grader in California, I was required to learn about the Spanish mission system.

Although it was sixteen years ago, I remember our curriculum was comprised of a site

visit to the local mission, San Juan Batista, and an assignment to build a model of the

mission. We were informed of the twenty­one missions up and down the coast and how

important Christianity is, but we were never told the darker side of history. We weren’t

told that the Spanish mission system was a militaristic systematic attempt to religiously

convert and enslave the indigenous peoples of California for Spanish commercial gain.

The absence of the indigenous perspective in history is prejudicial. More so even, the

absence is an expression of a deeply rooted colonial normalization of indifference and

racism. Everywhere in the United State’s public primary education there are examples of

indigenous history not being taught, overlooked, and/or ignored. The columbus day

celebration, the tales of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, the Fool Soldiers of Teton

Indians, the valorization of the California gold rush, are just a few examples of this

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institutionalized normalization of settler colonialism. Is it out of naivetë? Or is it

something more? Prejudicial notions are engendered through commonly held ideologies

taught in ideological institutions such as the public education system and the nuclear

family. In the case of U.S. history, a one­sided position often normalizes the ideology of

settler colonialism. And that normalization gets handed down, generation to generation

and teacher to teacher. The preface of Marc Ferro’s The Use and Abuse of History

eloquently and succinctly describes the philosophy of historiography, “our image of other

peoples, or of ourselves for that matter, reflects the history we are taught as children.”

And more importantly, describes the power of history, “to control the past is to master the

present, to legitimize dominion and justify legal claims” (Ferro, 2003). Presenting the

idea of history in this way implies the notion that there is not one singular history, but

rather, a multitude of knowledge pathways through history that one can learn and/or

teach. In Native Historians Write Back, Susan A. Miller and James Riding In elaborate on

the power of history:

“A shared history makes a people of what would otherwise be an assortment of persons; it defines much of a people’s collective identity. A people’s history can inspire them to action, explain and justify their acts, and define them in the eyes of outsiders. Outsiders can promote a people’s oppression by suppressing or distorting their history. A people who affirm their history can make themselves strong. History is so powerful that the emergence and persistence of indigenous historiography bodes well for the futures of indigenous communities.” (Miller & Riding In, 2011)

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It is therefore imperative that an indigenous historiography finds it way into mass

communication and becomes part of the common history that we are all taught.

Media and Mass Communication

Mass communication has generally suppressed indigenous voices, and when

indigenous characters or perspectives are included, they are mostly romanticized,

propagandized, or skewed. Lyman Frank Baum, writer of the Wizard of Oz, for example,

was also a writer in two editorials about Native Americans for the Aberdeen Saturday

Pioneer in South Dakota. Note the word, ‘about.’ Baum wrote on the death of Sitting 3

Bull for these editorials in the 1890s during the Ghost Dance movement:

“With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished , and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings.” 4

This style of writing is generally representative of the colonizers writing about Natives

during the 18th 19th centuries. L. Baum’s piece is an impeccable addition to what

Nichole Meyers­Lim, writer for News from Native California, calls the second stage of

genocide, “symbolization.” Symbolization is “the labeling of Native peoples as savage,

3Venables, Robert. "Twisted Footnote to Wounded Knee". Northeast Indian Quarterly. 4 "L. Frank Baum's Editorials on the Sioux Nation" at the Wayback Machine (archived December 9, 2007) Full text of both, with commentary by professor A. Waller Hastings

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uncivilized, diggers, and redskins.” (Meyers­Lim, 2015) Although this direct and blunt

symbolization and derogatory speech is mostly historic, there are current examples of

negative media about Natives today however. A more contemporary example of

derogatory colonial speech or narrative can be primarily associated with Hollywood. The

films Far and Away (1992), True Grit (1969), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), Dances

With Wolves (1990) and Tombstone (1993) all conjure up romanticized ideas of cowboys,

Indians, buffalo, trains, and the old west. This type of imagined romanticization doesn’t

only occur in Hollywood films either. JK Rowling, writer of the Harry Potter series

recently tweeted in June of 2015 about the new American Wizarding School attraction,,

“indigenous magic was important in the founding of the school. If I say which tribes,

location is revealed.” Romanticization is part of the colonial ideology that normalizes 5

settler colonialism and continues the narrative of the disappearing, ancient Indian. To

counteract that romanticism, Adrienne K. writes in a Native Appropriations post, “we’re

not magical creatures, we’re contemporary peoples who are still here, and still practice

our spiritual traditions, traditions that are not akin to a completely imaginary wizarding

world.” 6

5 Native Appropriations: http://nativeappropriations.com/2015/06/dear­jk­rowling­im­concerned­about­the­american­wizarding­school.html 6 Adrienne K, Native Appropriations http://nativeappropriations.com/2015/06/dear­jk­rowling­im­concerned­about­the­american­wizarding­school.html

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It wasn’t until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed in 1978 7

that Native Americans were able to, legally, practice their religious beliefs or posses

sacred objects like eagle feathers.The American Indian Religious freedom act along with

the American Indian Movement that began in the 1960s is part of the larger shift that

begins to incorporate an indigenous voice from the indigenous people. In other words, an

indigenous historiography. Historical suppression and propagation of the indigenous

voice by colonizers has steadily been becoming less since the 1960s. There are currently

over 380 self­published Native media outlets in the contiguous US . This shift can 8

perhaps be largely be attributed to the rising number of Native scholars and theologians.

There has been a steady increase in the number of indigenous college students. “From

1976 to 2011 the percentage of American Indian/Alaska Native students rose from 0.7 to

0.9 percent. During the same period, the percentage of White students fell from 84

percent to 61 percent” Population has also steadily been increasing. “The American 9

Indian and Alaska Native population increased by 26.7 percent in the last decade,

compared to 9.7 percent for Americans as a whole,” These demographic changes are a 10

potential reason for the increasing indigenous voice. During this same time period (the

late 20th and early 21st century) there has also been an exponential growth in technology.

7 American Indian Religious Freedom Act: 42 U.S.C. § 1996 8 This number is sourced from the research assistant work I completed with professor Cristina Azocar of San Francisco State University in 2012. It is discussed in the ‘futures’ section. 9 U.S. Department of Education 10 U.S. Census Bureau

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In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas defines a public

sphere as “an arena, independent of government and also enjoys autonomy from partisan

economic forces, and which is both accessible to entry and open to inspection by the

citizenry. It is here, in this public sphere, that public opinion is formed.” This public

sphere, in today’s terms is the Internet. Although the Internet is becoming more

integrated with ‘partisan economic forces,’ it is nonetheless a public sphere to those who

can access it. Although television subscriptions and moviegoers have been steadily

declining since 2002, we are not becoming less connected from media. We may be even 11

more connected to media than ever. Today’s media is changing what Daniel Bernardi

calls, our narrative landscape, “[a] metaphor to describe the complex array of narratives

prevalent within a mediated environment.” The Internet is far less mediated than

television or movies, and is therefore less discriminatory, and allows for voices

(including those who have previously been suppressed) stories, and news to arise faster

and in larger numbers. For example, the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed was

first announced on Twitter at 10:30pm (EST). Television news was covering it by

10:45pm and “in less than 12 hours since the tweeting began [there were] almost 40,000

blog post and news articles and an astounding 2.2 million tweets all talking about Osama

Bin Laden.” Data for how fast news and stories spread through social media could and 12

11 Swineburne, Business Insider 12 Sheldon Levine, Sysomos, How Fast the News Spreads Through Social Media, 2011

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should be gathered for indigenous stories in this new arena. News such as the Australian

and Canadian government's formally and publicly recognizing their own atrocious

colonial history of genocide. As our media changes and adapts to suit the Internet, the

contexts of media also change.

There are two contexts in which media functions, the formal and the social. The

formal context of media relies on medium­specific, technology­driven qualities. It also

relies on expressive techniques. The social context of media “involves understanding how

social forces and historical conflicts find representation in [media], and in the ways in

which [media] function[s] in society at large” (Nichols, 2010). Which context creates the

composition of media however? The social or the formal? The answer is both, the social

and formal contexts work in tandem. Just as our formal and societal contexts are

continuously changing, our modes of communication are also changing. Spoken­word

used to be our only source for stories, and it is still the most influential , and then we 13

were the mediators. Written word mediated through literature took precedent in the 18th

and 19th century, and in the 20th century the moving cinematic image became a major

mediating device.

Today we are once again in transition. This transition might best be elaborated by

Poynter journalist Jojo Malig's Tweet, “the novel defined 19th century culture, 20th

13 As researched by Malcom Gladwell in The Tipping Point, “Mavens start word­of­mouth epidemics due to their knowledge, social skills, and ability to communicate.”

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century by cinema, 21st century by the interface.” New story­forms are emerging too,

story­forms that lend themselves to the Internet. According to Aaron Koblin, a UCLA

graduate and Google Chrome Experiments partner, “our lives are being driven by data

and the presentation of that data is an opportunity for us to make some amazing interfaces

that tell great stories.” Given the predominance of digital technologies in the realm of

communication and representation today we must then ask, in what ways does the formal

context of today's information age media exemplify the social context of the information

age? Or is it the other way around? Do our social contexts and ideologies exemplify the

formal contexts and technologies?

In the western epistemology of things, Georges Melies' discovery of illusionist

special effects in the 1890s, Pathe Freres's manifestation of parallel editing in 1907, and

the introduction of audio by Palads Cinema in 1923, altered, and expanded cinematic

ideas based on the technology available (formal) and their societal contexts. Charles

Babbage's programmable computer (punch­card input and steam engine power) in 1833,

Herman Hollerith's invention of data storage in the 1880s, Konrad Zuse's invention of the

programmable calculator, the Z3 in 1941 were technological innovations that impacted

the formal and societal contexts. How do indigenous formal contexts instruct the social?

Are there formal ways in which stories are told? Do those ways then impact the societal

contexts?

The euro­centric history of the development of computing hardware and

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artistic/aesthetic techniques of film and photography have, together, become engulfed in

a fragmented communication web of social and technological applications that is today's

information age media. Adored as a kind of nerd­rockstar, directly before being arrested,

Justin Timberlake's character (Sean Parker) in The Social Network, added an interesting

take on social adaptation, “we lived in farms, we lived in cities, and now we will live on

the internet.” For obvious reasons we cannot pragmatically live on the internet, but it is

abundantly apparent that we are indeed beginning to live and base our lives around the

internet (primarily in urban cities).

Indeed the mode of mass communication is changing. This is not to say that

media is dead or dying; rather, a re­affirmation and transition of new expressive strategies

in media are taking place. This transition incorporates a digitally immersed and

media­saturated aesthetic. As Robert Rosen, UCLA film archivist, explains, this is, “[a]

new practice for telling stories [that is] fully resonant with the sensibilities and lifestyles

of a generation of young people navigating the complexities of contemporary media

culture.” These new forms of complex expressive strategies are, in part, an inadvertent

result of a media saturated culture where computer mediated tools, programmers, web

developers, game designers, software engineers, and web designers are unwittingly

framing the structure of our stories.

If mass communication is moving away from traditional media and into the

Internet’s new story forms (interactive documentary and data visualization), it is of

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utmost importance that indigenous voices (not propagated or romanticized ones) have a

place in this new arena. Some indigenous contributors and ally contributors to this arena

are The Minnesota Humanities Center’s Bdote Memory Map , the National Historical 14

Geographic Information System , Beth Rose Middleton’s California allotment work , 15 16

Sharon Daniel’s In The Fourth World, Smithsonian cartographer, Dan Cole, the Lakota

Language Consortium’s New Lakota Dictionary, Upper One Game’s Never Alone, just 17

to name a few. All of the mentioned people or groups are conducting research,

developing, and incorporating indigenous data­sets and/or stories into interactive forms

that can be used as pedagogical tools, similar to my project, Shift ­ Indian Country’s

Changing Landscape. This is a celebrated shift in mass communication as the digital

arena opens up more space for indigenous voices.

Decolonial Data

American Indian Studies scholar and theologian Vine Deloria (Lakota) defines

true liberation as “chang[ing] the way that Western peoples think, the way they collect

data, which data they gather, and how they arrange that information.” Shift, Indian

Country’s Changing Landscape is an immersive installation and public website that

14 http://www.bdotememorymap.org/ 15 https://nhgis.org/ 16 Not public for security measures. 17 http://www.lakotadictionary.org/

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offers a reversal of ideologies that are often normalized in the United States—including

settler colonialism, genocide and imperialism—through a series of decolonial data

visualizations. Data of and from the indigenous peoples of the area now known as the

United States is shown in a series of interactive and intuitive displays that attempt to

re­teach American history. Shift visualizes indigenous data­sets (Native land area, wars,

treaties, and tribe locations from 1500­2014) into an immersive and colossal, yet

intuitive, display designed to re­teach American history. The installation and website are

intended to reverse audiences’ colonial attitudes or enhance decolonial habits of thought

through the sub­text of reversing settler colonial ideologies. The separate elements of the

installation are efforts to help people understand and contemplate on the impact of

colonialism through data, by placing the data into visual contexts. Throughout the work,

in each interface, there is a thematic concept of seeing through a facade, to the real. When

one looks through the magnifying glass or through the Treaty Viewer to the treaty

documents; the act of having to look serves as a metaphor for how difficult this

information is to find. The Treaty Flag, another element in the series allows us to see

through the American flag to the words that ‘made’ the country. The Decolonial Map

allows us to see through the demarcated geographic border lines into the history of Native

elimination, forced removal, and imperialism ­ in other words, it reveals colonization.

Western imperialism and colonialism stem from a Western epistemology

premised on Christian perceptions. It is therefore my requirement as an ally that the

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project operates without, or more importantly subverts that epistemology. As Simpson

and Smith state in Theorizing Native Studies (2014), “the pathway to decolonization

requires a fundamental epistemological shift away from Western theory.” It is also

imperative that the project dismantles “the system that require Native peoples to

disappear in the first place” (Simpson and Smith, 2014) by defending Native sovereignty.

1)

a) Shaded in grey is the Native land area populated up to 1804. The red, “X” markers are wars, and the black markers are treaties, geo­located to where they were signed.

b) www.shift.land

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2)

a) As you click through the years, the circular buttons on the left, you can see the wars and treaties move westward as Native land disappears. You can also click on the markers to gain more information.

b) www.shift.land

3)

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4)

a) As you get closer to today, you can see where all of the federally recognized tribes headquarters are located. You can also click on the markers to gain more information.

b) www.shift.land

In The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo, Dan (last name unknown), a Lakota elder said, “to

us, American history is how the big sea became little ponds.” In one, short sentence, Dan

performs a symbolic gesture that reverses the historical legacy of manifest destiny – the

march of colonial expansion east to west – and replaces it with the indigenous

historiography of land loss, displacement and, most importantly, survival. Shift, Indian

Country’s Changing Landscape visualizes Dan’s gesture. By representing the atrocities

of the colonial legacy through interactive media, the visualizations and interactions

become decolonial allowing suppressed history to permeate through the colonial history.

The public web­site (currently) only includes the largest and most important work

in the project, the Decolonial Map. In the installation, there are seven separate (for now)

yet connected pieces. The ultimate decision and structural idea to have seven connected

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elements is related, a bit loosely, to the Sioux’s epistemology of the seven council fires.

My family is from South Dakota and I remember hearing about the seven council fires as

a child. South Dakota is part of the of area of the Great Plains tribal system or the Oceti

Sakowin, (Seven Council Fires). “Within the Oceti Sakowin, there are three tribal

divisions [Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota], and each division is comprised of bands [seven

all­together], who all speak different and distinct dialects.” The decision to include the 18

sacred number ‘seven’ of the Great Plains people is another decolonial layer, a subtle

way to open dialogue related to indigenous epistemologies.

1. An interactive magnifying glass that displays the original images of the treaties

(projected).

18 Understanding the Great Sioux Nation: http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9017

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a.

2. A touch screen interface of a digital American flag made up of the most used

verbs in the treaty corpus in order by frequency.

a.

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b.

3. A touch screen interface and projection displaying, geographically, every battle,

treaty, and land loss with descriptions and images from 1776­1923.

4. A 44 inch by 15 foot printed banner listing the most used words, verbs, and

phrases in all of the treaty corpus.

5. A 44 inch by 15 foot printed banner listing the name and year of battles, wars, and

massacres, beginning in 1540 and ending in 1923.

6. A 44 inch by 15 foot printed banner listing every treaty, the year, and the Tribe(s),

beginning in 1778 and ending in 1868.

7. A 44 inch by 15 foot printed banner listing every federally recognized tribe, given

name, indigenous name, and translated into english meaning of their name.

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In addition to the over four hundred treaties and over three hundred wars, there were

also numerous laws that contributed to the Native land cessions. The General Allotment

Act of 1887 (also called the Dawes Act), was the perpetrator behind 90 million acres of 19

Native land loss—nearly two­thirds of the total Native land base—being taken out of

Indian ownership and control. From 1887 to 1934, 60 million acres of “surplus Indian

lands” were sold or transferred to non­Natives and another 30 million acres were lost due

to the 1906 Burke Act, forced sales, and other takings. Incorporating the history of law,

the contemporary wars and land rights, and localizing this project is the next phase of the

Decolonial Map. Aside from treaties and war, the law was another forceful tool that aided

to the cession of Native lands. The addition of all laws that enacted an indoctrination of

Native peoples and/or their lands needs to be geo­located and included on the interactive

map. The 1789­1811 Treaty and Trade Acts, the 1812 Act that permitted military

establishment, the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, and the 1887 Dawes Act, for example.

Land ownership is also still changing and there are many conflicts today over water

rights, land, and resources between the government, farmers, and tribes. The Keystone

pipeline Cowboy and Indian coalition, the Bundy Standoff, Flathead Reservation water

rights battle, and the Black Mesa Peabody Controversy are contemporary conflicts that

19 Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol1/html_files/ses0033.html

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come to mind. The inclusion of contemporary conflicts into the Decolonial Map is a

necessity as colonialism hasn’t ended.

Methodology

The concept of this project originated from my work as an undergraduate research

assistant at San Francisco State University. While at SFSU, I collated over 380 Native

media outlets across the contiguous US. During this time, I was also reading Kent

Nerburn’s trilogy about the Lakota elder, Dan . It was then that I realized just how many 20

unique indigenous, sovereign nations, languages, and practices, there are. After

graduating and an almost year long break from higher education, touring the southwest,

rock climbing, and living out of my Jeep with my dog, I narrowed and utilized my wide

range of media, web, and coding skills into what began as a simple interactive mapping

project.

The first phase of Shift was exploring libraries and archives. I toured A.L.

Kroeber’s archives in Berkeley, searched aimlessly online, and toured University of

California, Santa Cruz’s Special Collections. In the Krober archives I found many

extensive printed transcriptions of interviews with Native Americans throughout the

20 Nerburn, Kent. Neither Wolf nor Dog on Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2002. Print. Nerburn, Kent. The Wolf at Twilight an Indian Elder's Journey through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2009. Print. and Nerburn, Kent. The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo: A Child, an Elder, and the Light from an Ancient Sky. 2013. Print. A motion picture is currently being made of the third book.

Marci 26

country that took place in the late 1900s. A lot of the interviews were discussions of what

it was like to be an Indian today. There were also a few audio recordings, photos, and

many maps. I took photos of a map that outlined the pre­colonial indigenous tribes by

language areas. I took those home and researched how to create shapefiles (geographic

information system’s source files) and used QGIS (open source software) and ArcGIS to

georeferenced Kroeber’s map. I completed the georeferenced of the map that divided

California by language of tribes. I thought it useful to be able to interact with the map

online, but I then thought about Dan’s quote, “to us American history is how the big sea

became little ponds” and realized that the California map not enough.

I scheduled a meeting with a university librarian, and she helped me find the

Handbook of North American Indians which contained the exact maps I was looking for.

Maps created by Smithsonian Institute cartographer, Dan Cole.

I contacted Dan Cole and got permission to geo­reference these maps. I converted them

into digital shapefiles (georeferenced) that I could then utilize in a front­end (html, css,

jquery) web interface via Map Box’s API.

Marci 27

After a few weeks of digging through Map Box’s support and asking technical javascript

questions on StackExchange, I had a solid, interactive interface that displayed Indian

country’s changing land from 1775­1923.

Marci 28

The early phase of the project was impactful, but I ultimately deemed it not enough, I

wanted to visualize what really made the land change: forced relocation, genocide, wars,

treaties, and laws: colonialism. I then began to search for more archives. After extensive

time spent in the library and online, I finally found Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties,

Compiled and Edited by Charles J. Kappler. I read through a dozen of the treaties and 21

began to create a database. In the database, I recorded the year, tribe, short description,

and where the treaty was signed. In order to geo­locate the location, I researched and

implemented two custom Google Docs script/formula. =getlat( ) & =getlong( )22

21Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties archive: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/index.htm 22 Digital Geography: http://www.digital­geography.com/geocoding­google­spreadsheets­the­simpler­way/#.VXieV47F98k

Marci 29

After manually recording all of this information into the database, I used the small

amount of grant money I received to hire my Lakota friend, Sinte Numpa, to help

geo­code the treaties. After we finished geocoding over 400 treaties, I exported the

database into separate .csv files organized by thirty year increments and uploaded it to

MapBox. I created two different style markers to identify treaties and wars. I then began

coding those layers into an interactive interface using html, css, and javascript. During

this time I also began compiling a raw text document of all the treaties to analyze with

Stanford’s Natural Language Toolkit. I found an archive compiled by Legends of

America of all the Native American wars and compiled a similar database and geocoded 23

the war locations. I repeated the Map Box integration and coded the interactivity.

All the while, I contacted the Bishop Paiute tribe because I often go rock climbing

there. I wanted to inquire about volunteering with the tribe to see what I could offer and

what I might be able to learn. When I began to conceptualize the project, I had a rule. The

rule was to not romanticize. It therefore became apparent that I needed indigenous

backing and guidance. Around this time, I was due for a rock climbing trip, and I headed

out to Bishop. I met Raymond Andrews, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer

(THPO). After a drug test, background check, and several discussions on confidentiality

and intentions, Raymond deemed my trustworthiness and our rapport strong enough and

23 Legends of America archive: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na­battletales.html

Marci 30

enlisted me to build an interactive map. The map is used to track burial and artifact sites

in order to protect them. Most if not all of the sites are not in the state’s registrar and

many people dig up and loot sites in the area. Recently, a 76 year old resident of Lone

Pine California, Norman Starks was arrested for over 10 counts of “unauthorized removal

of archaeological resources, depredation of government property, and possession of

stolen government property” Raymond and I are are still working on this project now. 24

Given the enormity of the colonial oppression of indigenous people in the US I

knew that these efforts would still not fully represent its history. Then when began work

on a few more data­visualization projects. These visualizations were were to be a part of

Shift, but they have not been finalized.

Treaty Matrix (number of treaties per tribe by thirty years):

24 Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California. Lone Pine Man Indicted For Taking Archaeological Artifacts From Public Lands In Inyo County, Thursday, February 19, 2015. http://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/lone-pine-man-indicted-taking-archaeological-artifacts-public-lands-inyo-county

Marci 31

Aside from visualizing the treaty data geographically and temporally, we can also

visualize it in a more data­science, statistical way. A visualization of these forms are

quicker and easier to grasp the bigger picture, regardless of the age of the viewer.

Marci 32

Population Motion Graph:

Treaties, wars, and laws are what caused the land and peoples to change, but what

happened to the indigenous people? Another data­set that I began to research and collate

is population data. Russell Thornton compiled data from the US Census bureau into his

book, American Indian Holocaust and Survival. I took the compiled numbers and created

an interactive motion graph inspired by Hans Rosling.

Two things that appear when viewing the data in this form are that a number of tribes

were killed off to extinction, and just how damaging the California gold rush was to the

indigenous people. In 1792 it was estimated that there were 264,800 indigenous people in

Marci 33

California. By 1901 there were 15,400 survivors. That is genocide at an extremely fast

rate. These visualizations need to developed in style and functionality.

Future

Although Shift has taken two years to get to where it is today, there is still much

to do. There is a large amount of potential growth. The source data for the project is vast

and very inter­weaveable, there are exponential ways the series can grow, change, or

adapt. However, the most important next step is coding the decolonial map’s website into

a responsive format. Once this is done, it will be mobile and cross platform friendly.

Because many people (especially on the res) use cell phones to connect to the Internet,

this is a very important phase. The addition of the colonial data­set of laws relating to

Native Americans needs to be researched, geo­located, and added also. More specifically

the same data (land area, treaties, wars, and laws) needs to be localized (from tribe to

tribe) and integrated into the same or similar formats. More generally, a more sound

argument and story could be developed by combining all of the interfaces. Creating a

version of the project that incorporates a multitude of connected visualizations would

create more of an interactive documentary form and a narrative would appear. It would

be more compelling, and would allow for interaction with all of the data in one place.

These kind of data­visualizations are indeed important and impactful, but how do we

visualize this kind of data through indigenous methodologies?

Marci 34

Raymond Andrews’s (Bishop Paiute) family is historically known for their basket

weaving. He began weaving in the 1960s in order to preserve the practice as his siblings

weren’t practicing the art. After working a couple months with Raymond, I came up with

an idea to weave the colonial data into indigenous traditional ways; literally weaving the

data into baskets or beadwork. The artist, Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee) has

done something similar with photographs of treaty signings in her series, Invited to the

Table of Deceit. Representing the colonial data in this way truly decolonizes it and

instantly adds the other side of the story to the photograph or data.

Conclusion Every state, city, county, town, national park, and state park in the US is a

homeland to an indigenous group. Although many groups have been decimated by

disease, warfare, forced relocation, and genocide, so many have survived, and continue to

thrive. This project intervenes in an educational system (elementary, high school, and

college) that institutionalizes and perpetuates genocide and racism by not offering

indigenous perspective on land and history. By visualizing the data of the colonial legacy

in what is now the US, the suppressed history is revealed and becomes decolonial. The

project is therefore a decolonial pedagogical tool that is applicable to many fields; web

development, data­science, data­art, geography, cartography, Native history, American

history, media, digital art, and most importantly, pedagogy.

Marci 35

References

ARCHIVAL

"American Indian Area/Alaska Native Area." U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 TIGER/Line

files (2011): n.pag. National Historical Geographic Information System. Web. 7

Sept 2013.

Kappler, Charles. ""Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties" Volume II (Treaties)." Indian

Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Oklahoma State University Library and TechBooks, 1

Jan. 2000. Web. 1 Jan. 2013. <http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/>.

Krauss, Michael. "Status of Native American Language Endangerment." Stabilizing

Indigenous Languages. Ed. Gina Cantoni. Flagstaff: Center for Excellence in

Education Monograph, 2007. Print.

Tharp, Roland. "Video Collection of Roland G. Tharp, Ph.D.." Labriola National

American IndianData Center XII.2 (2004): n.pag. Web. 7 Apr 2014.

<http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives/summer2004.htm

THEORETICAL

Alfred, Taiaiake. Peace Power and Righteousness an Indigenous Manifesto. Don

Mills: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.

Anderson, M. Kat. Tending the Wild, Native American Knowledge and the

Management of California's Natural Resources. Berkeley and Los Angeles,

California: University of California Press, 2005. Print.

Bernardi, Daniel, Pauline Cheong, Chris Lundry, and Scott Ruston, Narrative

Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence,

(Rutgers University Press, 2012).

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American

West. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1971. Print.

Marci 36

Ferro, Marc. The Use and Abuse of History, Or, How the past Is Taught to Children.

Rev. ed. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Goldberg, C., & Champagne, D. (2002, July 2). Retrieved June 6, 2015.

Heart, Bear. The Wind is My Mother. Berkley Trade, 1998. Print.

Hopkirk, Peter. Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet.

Kodansha USA, 1995. Print.

Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Vintage,

2006. Print.

Meyers­Lim, Nichole. "Educating Elementary School Children About California

Missions and the Perpetuation of Genocide." News from Native California 1 Dec.

2015: 42­45. Print.

Miller, Susan A. and Riding In, James. Native Historians Write Back: Decolonizing

American Indian History. Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Tech UP, 2011. Print.

Nerburn, Kent. Neither Wolf nor Dog. New World Library, 2002. Print.

Nerburn, Kent. The Wolf at Twilight. New World Library, 2009. Print.

Nerburn, Kent. The Girl who Sang to the Buffalo. New World Library, 2013. Print.

Simpson, Audra, and Andrea Smith. Theorizing Native Studies. Duke UP, 2014. Print.

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Indians. 4. Smithsonian Institute Scholarly Press, 1989. Print.

Sparks, Glenn. Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview. Cengage Learning, 2012.

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Thorton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival, Population History since

1942. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Print.

White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern

America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.

Marci 37

Waziyatawin, Angela. What does Justice look like? The Struggle for Liberation in

Dakota Homeland. Living Justice Press, 2008. Print.

Waziyatawin, Angela, and Michael Yellow Bird. For Indigenous Eyes Only: A

Decolonization Handbook. School of American Research Press, 2005. Print.

CREATIVE

Bdote Memory Map. Digital image. Http://bdotememorymap.org/. 1 Jan. 2005. Web.

Goshorn, Shan. Invited to the Table of Deceit. Digital image.

Http://www.shangoshorn.net/. 1 Jan. 2014. Web.

Holland, Dk. Communication Arts: Interactive Annual 19. Vol. 55. Menlo Park, CA:

Coyne & Blanchard, Inc., 2013. 16­19,106­107. Print.

Koblin, Aaron, "Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity," Transcribed by

TedTalks, 05/01/2011, Web, http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_koblin.html

TECHNICAL

Ashton, AJ. "Mapbox.js Examples." Layers Control (2013): n.pag. MapBox. Web. 23

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Călinică, Sorin . "Using Affine Transformation to expand polygons in QGIS." 26

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nd­polygons­in­qgis>.

Fry, Ben. Visualizing Data: Exploring and Explaining Data with the Processing

Environment. O'Reilly Media, 2008. Print.