Building Capacity for Indigenous Mapping & Data Sovereignty: In collaboration with the Chickahominy Indian Tribe and the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe

The Indigenous Environmental Mapping and Resilience Planning Project has worked over the summer with two of the federally recognized Native American tribes of Virginia, the Chickahominy Indian Tribe and the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe. As mentioned in our first abstract, Western academia has participated in an exploitative, extractive relationship with Indigenous tribes. Our project challenges the structures of settler society by aligning our research objectives with goals and values provided by the Chickahominy and Upper Mattaponi. These objectives include building tribal capacity in mapping and data sovereignty to help inform tribal environmental decision making. Honoring Indigenous knowledge is key to our project’s overall goal of Indigenizing academia, including honoring Indigenous data sovereignty. Thus not all aspects or results of our project are shown in this video, in accordance with the wishes of the Chickahominy and Upper Mattaponi. Project deliverables include a GIS training workshop for Chickahominy tribal environmental managers, a preliminary GIS database of Chickahominy and Upper Mattaponi tribal land and bioculturally significant sites, a visualization of landscape change within Upper Mattaponi tribal lands, a literature review on Indigenous data sovereignty, and a preliminary data analysis of demographic and environmental questions from the Upper Mattaponi Tribal Wellness survey

[Two undergraduate researchers stand against a white wall, and assorted photos and video from Chickahominy and Upper Mattaponi fieldwork] Maiya: Our project, the Indigenous Environmental Mapping and Resilience Planning Project, has been working over the summer with two of the federally recognized Native American tribes of Virginia – the Chickahominy and Upper Mattaponi Indian Nation. Our work with these two tribes has been to establish environmental data baselines, using specific guidelines given to us by the tribe’s environmental offices.
Paloma: As we’ve mentioned in our previous video, maintaining tribal sovereignty over their respective data and knowledge is key to our work. This video will focus primarily on Indigenous Data Sovereignty, the GIS Map training and work we’ve been conducting over the summer, and our time with the Upper Mattaponi Indian tribe.

[Footage and images from the Upper Mattaponi PowWow interspersed with images and footage from Upper Mattaponi lands as well as GIS footage] James: Indigenous data are defined as any piece of information that impacts Indigenous people as a group or as individuals, Indigenous lives, Indigenous cultures, and Indigenous languages (NCEAS, 2021). For example, Indigenous data may include environmental data such as geospatial or watershed information, data regarding Indigenous nations as a polity, and data about individuals such as demographic or epidemiological data (ibid.). Indigenous data are especially relevant regarding Indigenous sciences that leave further room for subjectivity and qualitative data, as well as the dissemination of Indigenous knowledge through oral histories. Sovereignty is broadly understood as rights of self-determination and self-governance without outside interference. In the context of sovereign Indigenous nations, Indigenous Data Sovereignty refers to Indigenous ownership and control of data, rather than data being owned by an outside university or government. Indigenous Data Sovereignty is critically important to enabling Indigenous environmental stewardship, collective knowledge ownership, and non-extractive data collection (NCEAS, 2021). There are many methods through which Indigenous leaders and collaborating researchers have worked to ensure long-term Indigenous data sovereignty and governance of information about Indigenous lives. Our project this summer has worked to establish and maintain IDS by deferring to leadership for the Upper Mattaponi and Chickahominy tribes in regards to data that is confidential. This has involved flexibility with internal use and delivery of data in which control lies in the hands of tribal leadership. While our team has worked to collect data, tribal leaders are able to govern the data that is relevant to the lifeways of tribal citizens.

[Footage of the Chickahominy GIS training session interspersed images and footage from Upper Mattaponi fieldwork and GIS footage]

Adam: Using GIS can be difficult to use, because GIS software has many capabilities and numerous ways to navigate the many menu options. GIS is Important to learn, because so much data today has a spatial component, and spatial problem-solving can be used in nearly every field. GIS is an important tool for analyzing important issues facing the earth today. For the GIS training with the Chickahominy Tribal members, ArcGIS Pro was used. ArcGIS Pro is a GIS software that allows you to access, explore, visualize, create maps, and analyze data geospatially. The most enjoyable part of the GIS training is showing how maps can be used to explain spatial relationships.

[Leigh stands in front of a wooded ponded area interspersed with GIS time series analysis] Leigh: My name is Leigh Mitchell. I’m the environmental and cultural protection director with the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, citizen of the Cherokee Nation. It is up to the tribe, uh, themselves to to lead, um, lead a project in a way where again their control and their use of their identity is up up to them, um, to describe, disseminate, research, um, look into, um, so while an individual tribal citizen can, um, of course you know interact and create data and kind of the the tribal sovereignty aspect is a whole new layer, um, that’s really important. Like I said kinda every step of the way we are considering,um, you know are we putting information at risk are we ensuring that, um, the information we want to be out there is out there are we sharing too much, um, how do we keep, um, internal knowledge internal, um, so when looking at environmental restoration I can I can say you know this is a sacred site or um or I can say there’s a sacred relative or a species there that is important, um, but any more you know that’s really up to the tribe to say what they want to say, um.

[Footage from the Upper Mattaponi PowWow]

Sara: At the beginning of the summer, some of our members had the chance to attend Upper Mattaponi’s yearly powwow, which had not been held since 2019. Here are some of the team members pictured with Upper Mattaponi Chief Frank Adams, enjoying the Powwow.

[Footage of Upper Mattaponi lands interspersed with footage and photos of some of the team meeting with Upper Mattaponi members]

Domi: While we weren’t able to conduct a wildlife survey in a similar vein to the one done on Chickahominy lands, we were able to meet with Leigh Mitchell, Environmental and Cultural Protection Director of the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, and Reggie Tupponce, Tribal Administrator of the Upper Mattaponi. We were able to view some of the Upper Mattaponi lands, as well as the environmental risks in the area, such as a kitty litter factor and extensive sand and gravel operations. Some of our members worked on doing a preliminary data analysis using data from a Tribal Wellness Survey conducted by the tribe in 2021; data from this survey contains valuable insights into Tribal Members’ observations regarding the increased intensity of storms and droughts in the region. Our team has also partnered with Upper Mattaponi on important mapping projects, including the documentation of recently reacquired tribal properties using ArcGIS and Google Maps. Some of the featured data that we’ve developed include images of landscape and watershed change over time, as well as changes in air quality from 1998-2020. We’ve worked with Tribal Members and administrators to integrate this information into an accessible and secure database that can inform tribal decision-making for years to come.

[Three undergraduate researchers stand against a white background, interspersed with footage from Chickahominy fieldwork]

Domi: The work we’ve been doing this summer is a part of efforts to decolonize our work here at George Mason. What we’re doing isn’t about controlling research objectives, data, or access to data, but capacity building with Native tribes of Virginia to assist them in managing their own lands and cultures.
Guadelupe: We hope you’ve gained an understanding on valuing Indigenous Sovereignty and knowledge in academia and building and maintaining a reciprocal, additive relationship with Native peoples across Turtle Island and the world.
Patti: The relationships we’ve been building with the tribes are just as important as the data we’ve been working on. We would love to expand our work to other tribes in the Chesapeake Bay area, and that this sets the foundation for future work between George Mason and the Native folk whose land we continue to occupy.

[Thanks and credits set against PowWow footage as well as team photos and footage of both Chickahominy and Upper Mattaponi lands as music from the Upper Mattaponi PowWow plays]