Steve Deroy: Deepening geospatial knowledge through indigenous mapping (ep303)
What is the relationship between cartography and power? How are high-tech map-making tools being utilized to support Indigenous sovereignty and community rights?
In this episode, we welcome Steve DeRoy, an award-winning cartographer from the buffalo clan who is Anishinaabe/Saulteaux and a member of the Ebb and Flow First Nation from Manitoba. He is the co-founder, director, and past president of the Firelight Group, and he founded the annual Indigenous Mapping Workshop.
Steve has applied his expertise to lead traditional knowledge and use studies for numerous Indigenous groups affected by large-scale energy developments. Since 1998, Steve has mentored Indigenous practitioners, conducted risk assessments, built decision-support systems and monitoring tools, supported land claims, developed best practices, established consultation processes, facilitated community engagement and planning approaches, and supported negotiations between Indigenous communities, governments, and industries. Steve is an international speaker and has presented at numerous conferences, university lectures, and events.
Steve is a board member of the West Coast Environmental Law Association, a board member of the Canadian Remote Sensing Society, a board member of the Canadian Urban Institute, an advisory board member of the Institute for Integrative Conservation at William & Mary, an advisor to the Metcalf Foundation, a moderator of the Open Forum on Participatory Geographic Information Systems and Technologies, and a trainer of the Google Earth Outreach Trainers Network.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Come Over Tonight by Luna Bec
“The underlying notion of a map is an exertion of power—the person holding the pen ultimately decides what gets put into the map and what is excluded.”
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Transcript
Note: Green Dreamer is a community-powered multimedia journal exploring our paths to collective healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. The values, views, and opinions of our diverse guests do not necessarily reflect those of Green Dreamer. Please do your own additional research on the information, resources, and statistics shared. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamea Chayne: You've worked as an award-winning cartographer since 1998. Could you share a little bit about your background and what it was that led you to the field of cartography?
Steve DeRoy: If you want to know the honest truth, I fell into cartography. In high school, I really loved art, and I loved computers. I found that cartography and GIS were a blend of those two things. I grew up in Niagara, close to the border of Buffalo, and my neighbor across the street used to travel back and forth to work for the USGS. So when he was talking to my parents one day, he said, ‘hey, there's this emerging field of GIS and mapping that maybe your son might be interested in.’ So I explored it. I loved the idea of blending art and science together. I applied to a couple of colleges and universities, and I attended a program at Fleming College in southern Ontario.
I didn't really quite know what I would do with mapping, and it wasn't until the third year that I met a First Nations gentleman from northern Ontario who was using mapping to better understand the impact of logging and forestry near his community. He told me that they were using it to document community values and use it for planning. I just thought, wow, that's what I want to be doing. So I've dedicated my career to surround myself with people that are much smarter than I am, that are on the front lines of doing this work. And I really wanted to gain that knowledge and learn how to apply mapping and the related technologies in ways that might benefit the interests of indigenous communities. One opportunity led to another, and here I am today. Twenty-four years later, I'm still doing mapping.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for sharing that.
Maps are, of course, something that most people get exposed to through our educational institutions, starting from when we're little. But I think few people really question the process behind mapmaking and cartography and what it's actually influenced by—and therefore how it might shape our understandings of the world through specific lenses. I wonder about the troubling presumption that maps are objective tools rather than ones that have been shaped by power and the mappers’ own human biases. What should we know in regards to the history of mapmaking and who traditionally had power and control over this process?
Steve DeRoy: It's a great question, and one of the things that we think about with mapping is that maps have been used for communication purposes, and they've been used for navigation purposes. But as you said, the underlying notion of a map is an exertion of power. The person holding the pen, ultimately, decides what gets put onto the map, what gets excluded from the map.
This is often what I talk about in my presentations—that many of those early maps that were depicting, say, New France or North America, really excluded the Indigenous perspective. At the stroke of a pen or the lack thereof, Indigenous perspectives of space and place were ultimately eliminated from the map.
It made it look like the landscape was empty. Meanwhile, there were societies and governance processes and ways in which people connected to that landscape that was ultimately erased over time. And so a lot of my work is focusing on bringing that knowledge and that training to communities so that they can be in the driver's seat to decide what gets put onto the map, how to tell those different stories of space and place, and really empower communities to essentially become indigenous mappers. That's my vision—to build a global community of Indigenous mappers.
Kamea Chayne: One of the most powerful and dominant mapping tools that we have today is Google Maps, which has built on centuries of work in primarily Western cartography. But again, it's centuries of work that had skewed foundations in terms of who had power over deciding, first of all, the physical borders that we should see as the reality, and then also what makes it into the maps and how that is showcased. How have these dominant Western forms of mapping impacted Indigenous communities, sovereignty, rights, and geographies around the globe by teaching a reality to people that may lead to the erasure of Indigenous realities?
Steve DeRoy: Well, I think we have to think about these things as technologies and tools.
When these tools come out, they're used as an opportunity to better explore space and place. I have a close working relationship with folks at Google Earth outreach. The whole idea is, how do we apply these tools in ways that maybe the developers of the tools don't really quite know that people might use them? Oftentimes, it's more about exploring what those tools can do given their limitations. How do we leverage them in ways that might allow indigenous communities to benefit from them? In my field of cartography, Google is a great tool, but there are many, many tools out there that are available both as a paid version, but also as a free version. What we try to do is be software-agnostic and say there's a whole suite of tools that you might use to tell that story, and you decide which tool works for the process that you're trying to achieve.
There are some tools that are really great for mobile data collection, some are great for telling stories, and there are some for managing it in cloud-based services. So this is a lot of the work that we're doing is just trying to expose communities to say, okay, yes, there is an inherent bias that goes along with these tools and the layers that are on that. So how do you augment those tools and put information that's relevant to you onto those base maps? A lot of the work is training communities to apply those tools. And I always say don't be afraid to break the tools. And that's how you really learn how you might be able to move forward with or without those tools. And so a lot of it comes down to understanding what your needs are and understanding what your end goal is. And then some tools will get you there faster and easier than others.
Kamea Chayne: And just out of curiosity, before you worked with Google to improve their mapping process through an indigenous lens, was there anything that you were particularly concerned about in regards to what they had been leaving out or not centering within their tool that could have been harmful to Indigenous rights?
Steve DeRoy: Well, I've been in this field of cartography for a long time, going back to when we used to use scribes and pen and ink and draw maps. The technology has advanced so rapidly over the past 20 odd years – it went from these hand-drawn maps to going into these studios to then process those maps to desktop computing to mobile data collection and mapping to cloud-based computing.
With the rapid pace of change of that technology, you have to ask those questions about who owns the data, where it's being stored, who has access to it, and what levels of permission are given to users. All of those types of questions you need to really understand before you actually adopt these tools.
So one of the things that I often say is, if you're looking at using these tools for internal confidential purposes, there might be some tools that are better for that than if you're putting it onto the web that maybe those servers are distributed around the globe and now you don't have control over where that information is stored. So these questions about data ownership and thinking about who has access and possession are really the critical questions that you need to be asking prior to adopting any of these tools. And like I said, some tools are really great for giving you that confidentiality and storing your data on your own computer. And others – if your data’s not as sensitive – great, use these tools. I mean, some of them are really great for getting that information out to the world. So understanding those questions is really critical before adopting any of these tools.
Kamea Chayne: We know today that there are over 5000 indigenous groups around the globe and every one, of course, has their own unique histories and cultures. But I wonder if, through working with various indigenous mappers from around the globe and also being very well versed in Western cartography, you've been able to find any differences between the two approaches—and how they might reflect their differing values, worldviews, and relationships to the land.
Steve DeRoy: As I mentioned earlier, a lot of communities were excluded from that mapmaking process. So a lot of the work that I and our team at the Firelight Group are trying to do is build a global community of indigenous mappers. What that means is making sure that those tools are accessible, making sure people have access to training and data, and understanding methods, and how to apply those tools. And so what we started out doing here in Canada was really to start talking about the use of maps within these various contexts, such as planning, managing capital assets, negotiating and documenting traditional knowledge and traditional land use activities. We've done a lot of work of that sort here in Canada.
And what I wanted to do was say, OK, well, what can we learn from other indigenous groups around the globe? So we actually started a workshop and supported a workshop in Aotearoa in New Zealand with the Maori tribe and Maori communities. We also worked with the Australian indigenous groups to put on a workshop in Australia. We've worked in South Africa. And what we've learned from those experiences is that there are different ways in which you might tell a story and different ways you might apply those tools. And the great thing about that is that we train people on what we think might be helpful and useful. And then we hear these great stories of how rangers in Australia are actually using mobile data collection tools or how Maori communities are using drones to tell stories from the air. And then we're able to take that and bring that back to Canada and say, hey, have you ever thought of doing this, this is what these communities are doing in these other parts of the world? So it's building a global dialogue on applications of these tools that I think is really beneficial. And I think that's the really great outcome of the Indigenous Mapping Workshop, is that we can better understand what the realities are of indigenous communities on a global basis and then be able to cater training that supports those realities.
Kamea Chayne: What's really interesting is that you're using very advanced technologies and mapping techniques to help support, in a lot of cases, the preservation of traditional knowledge and traditional lifeways, cultures and practices. Could you speak more to how you leverage the tools of modern technology to support the preservation of biocultural knowledge and practices?
Steve DeRoy: Well, many times communities are asked to bring their knowledge forward to inform processes, and where our work at Firelight Group is situated is in the impact assessment realm. So we're dealing with large-scale energy developments. And that type of knowledge and information can help inform how those developments take place or don’t take place. And so we're very accustomed to working with communities to better understand that knowledge, better understands what the land-use practices are, and then that helps inform those developments to then reduce the impacts on areas that might be culturally sensitive. But also be able to identify areas that might not necessarily be as culturally important or where there's a little more flexibility.
But I think the reality is that that information becomes critical to decision-making purposes for communities to be active in that dialogue and active in that participation of that process. In the past, many communities were left on the sidelines and now communities are able to leverage that information that they're using and collecting to be able to then advance their interests forward. And it's not that communities are averse to development. It's just saying, well, how do we mitigate the impacts on these values and maximize the benefits of these developments in ways that don't compromise those values. So this is where that type of information, documenting it, using these types of tools to inform the process where I think that many communities are able to see the benefits of it. And like I said earlier, our process is really about supporting communities to be in the driver's seat and training communities on how to do that type of research in ways that we think might be beneficial. And many communities are saying, well, you know, this works great and that tool works really great for us and they’re much more in a position to be deciding what the potential outcomes of this are. And from our perspective, that's a win. If the community is in the driver's seat and they're adopting these tools in ways that benefit them, then who are we to say that that's a bad thing?
Kamea Chayne: Absolutely. Something else that I've been pondering is that we often think of maps as being fixed, and because of that, a lot of us forget about how political and contentious many borders still are today. We also forget how arbitrary a lot of borders are too, such as the ones drawn around certain protected wildlife reserves—when in reality, those ecologies themselves don't really see those lines. Not to mention when we see geographies as being fixed, we start to live in this social construct rather than in reality, being constantly aware of our living and ever-transforming landscapes.
So, for example, we may neglect being attuned to how forests, grasslands, deserts, lakes, rivers, and coastlines are constantly growing or shifting or shrinking. And when we're out of touch with these living geographies and don’t notice the changes happening in real-time, we might not recognize or feel the pains or cries of the landscapes that are speaking out in their own language to be heard and cared for in better ways. What else would you add to all of this, especially in light of the ecological and climate crises that we’re having to confront today?
Steve DeRoy: Well, lines on maps matter. We've seen that over time, these arbitrary borders and artificial lines on maps, do have major implications. And I'll give you some examples. When we're talking about lines on maps, there are massive economic benefits that can be derived from the borders in which you live. So in the United States, certain states might be in oil-rich parts of the country and they really are able to leverage the activities that happen within those borders. The same thing happens here in Canada. Those provinces and territories are able to benefit from the natural resources that are derived from those areas. So lines on maps matter.
When we think about property, for example, many people talk about property and “this is their property line”. It has value and it gets assessed each year. And so if you don't think lines on maps matter, then you don't think about those kinds of situations. But it's true, the natural world is constantly evolving and changing. You look at a river bed and it continually changes depending on the flow of the river and what's in the riverbed and that line work is constantly changing.
But I think it's really important that we think about these places as cultural keystone places from an indigenous perspective. So what makes those places so important? Why are they important to communities? What makes it important for the habitats and the animals that live in those places? How do we work to protect those areas in ways that might be still accessible to communities without limiting people? Like it's nice to have these natural spaces, but to tell you the truth, many communities have relied on their longstanding knowledge of those spaces and places to be able to manage those resources in those areas that don't deplete it. So I think what we're talking about are two different worldviews: one worldview that focuses on how much benefit can we derive financially from that area and versus how much benefit can we derive from the natural economy that’s situated in those places.
And so I think that’s the struggle with the lines on maps, is that there are two different worldviews that are colliding with those areas and those concepts. And so from working with indigenous communities, we have these longstanding relationships to these spaces and places. We're able to live in harmony with those places and don't exploit them to the point that we can't use these anymore. I think that's the difference here. So from my perspective, it's important to convey those understandings of different worldviews. And if some of that can be done on maps, that's exciting. But some of it is using other forms of storytelling to talk about those spaces and places. So that's the exciting part of my work.
Kamea Chayne: That is the challenge: the contradiction between the worldviews. I wonder if a lot of our ecological and social problems today are driven by those borders that have been put up. Often when people talk about “decolonization”, they talk about taking down walls and borders, even questioning the idea of private property. So I wonder if a lot of these lines are necessary just to help us understand and navigate the world that we live in today, largely based on a system set up by those in power.
Steve DeRoy: Yeah, I think from my perspective, one way that you might think about it is as “decolonizing” the map. Another way is “indigenizing” the map. Right. So how do we tell the story of those spaces and places from an indigenous perspective? And so it's really an exciting opportunity to hear those different perspectives and to let the tools help tease those stories out. And like I say, some tools are really fantastic for telling stories. There are Story Maps that are put out by Esri, Google Earth has some great tools for storytelling, Mapbox has some really fantastic tools. There's a number of tools out there that are really effective at telling that story. How do we ensure that those communities that are trying to tell that story, that have access to those tools to be able to do so? And I think that's one of the biggest barriers, is many communities don't have access. And so how do we make sure that communities understand what's available, what the limitations are, what the opportunities are with each of those tools. And then, like I say, letting communities be able to decide what works best for them to be doing that storytelling.
Kamea Chayne: I would love to talk more about what you've been working on to help decolonize or indigenize cartography and then beyond that, too, with your work at Firelight. So what have you been working on in practice, like on the ground? What does work look like on a day-to-day basis for you? And how has Firelight been supporting native communities in Canada and beyond?
Steve DeRoy: A lot of my work is developing community processes to better understand the indigenous perspective. So we work with indigenous communities all across the country and a lot of the work is engaging indigenous community members to be active members of the research teams, to be documenting those community values. We use maps as a tool to document values onto. And so we go through a process of interviewing community members about their life experiences on the land. Many people have experiences of hunting and fishing and trapping and camping. And we go through a systematic process to document those values on maps.
What we do with that information is to help inform, like I said, large-scale energy development. But it also informs planning and long-term planning for communities to be able to prioritize particular areas throughout their territory – to say, well, we think that certain areas should be conserved and protected and we believe other areas could potentially be developed. And really giving communities the opportunity to be able to tell their story of a preferred future. So a lot of that initial research that we do feeds into those broader decision-making processes. The community helps to decide what they want to see in their territory and where those activities might take place. So our work is really about supporting communities to be in that driver's seat.
So day-to-day, we have projects all across the country in the far north. Since COVID has begun, we've actually had to do this type of work remotely. And so we're now engaging communities, using tools like we're using today: video conferencing tools and screen sharing, and using maps to still record that information, but remotely. And it's been really exciting to see communities adopting these virtual tools because I think that given the situation we were put in, we have to figure out how to innovate and how to be creative and how to thrive to ensure that those communities are not getting steamrolled by developments that are still ongoing. Just because we're all at home doesn't mean that those developments have stopped. We've actually seen an increase here in Canada. And so being able to apply these tools on a day-to-day basis is really important to ensure that consultation and accommodation are being upheld with indigenous communities. So a lot of my work is developing processes around community engagement and the use of these tools. And then a lot of our work supports things like negotiations. How do communities then leverage this information to negotiate benefit agreements with those developers? So we have a whole negotiation team that does that. We have a team of people that work through the regulatory process and there are many submissions and letters and responses and critiques of documents that those proponents are putting out. And so we have a whole team of people that do that. And we provide this wide range of services for indigenous communities to be a part of those processes.
So that's my day job. The fun stuff is the indigenous mapping, where I'm training people and training communities on how to apply these tools. And then in the other part of my work, I'm also a board member at a number of organizations: West Coast Environmental Law, the Remote Sensing Society of Canada, the Canadian Urban Institute, the Institute for Integrative Conservation at William and Mary. There's a lot of work that I do at a governance level with many other organizations that are working with indigenous communities.
Kamea Chayne: Right. And I think a lot of people understand the mission to support indigenous rights, but everything you're working on is really the nitty-gritty and oftentimes unglamorous technical work that needs to be done in order to support that on the ground. Like, for example, all these processes that need to be set up, the negotiations, navigating the legal systems, and so forth. So this is all really critical work that we're so grateful for your leadership on. And of course, we hope to support you in however we can as well. And I wonder if there are any success stories that you'd like to share in regards to how these processes or indigenous mapping have supported communities you've worked with to really ensure that the development projects in their region are being carried out in ways that they consent to and are okay with, as compared to other cases that infringe upon their rights and their sovereignty.
Steve DeRoy: Well, I think over the past decade, what we've seen is an increase in consultation activities. There's a thing called the “duty to consult” where the government has to consult with indigenous groups that might be impacted by certain developments or things that are happening on their land. And so what we've seen is a huge increase in the number of consultation activities that occur with a number of different files. Many communities often are drowning in the kind of requests for engaging in those various processes. And so I think from my perspective over the past decade, we've really looked at the question of how can communities leverage this process and be active in that dialogue between those companies and their communities, and use the research that we do with communities. So not only are we documenting traditional knowledge, but we're also doing work with ecology, we're doing work on health and socioeconomics. And how do we take all these types of research products to inform how these developments take place? And so it's certainly an exciting time.
I think the biggest positive outcome that might come out of this is that developers are coming into the backyards of indigenous communities. And so how do we support not only the developers to be good neighbors, but how do we support them to better understand what those indigenous perspectives of those spaces and places are? Also, how do we support communities as they inform the governments that are making decisions about those developments that are coming into those parts of the territory?
And so what we've seen is an increase in this dialogue and an increase in collaboration. And many communities are also able to see the benefits of development and be able to negotiate really good impact and benefit agreements and be able to be active in those developments and be able to steer developments towards what communities might see as preferential in certain places of the territory and be active as part of that economy. So that's the biggest outcome, is that instead of communities sitting on the sidelines and seeing these things happening in their backyard, they're active players in that development. So it's a very exciting time. And I think we're very grateful for the opportunity to be able to work with communities to be a part of that process.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for sharing that. We are coming to a close for our main discussion, but I'd love for you to share whatever else is on your mind that I didn't get to ask you about, as well as, of course, your calls to action for our listeners in terms of how they can best support your work and support ongoing indigenous mapping efforts.
Steve DeRoy: Yeah, I mean, we are very grateful for the work that we get to do. We recognize that we're being invited to many of these communities, so it's an honor for us to be able to support indigenous communities, to be in the driver's seat, and lead research that might affect their interests. So it's very exciting and our work is expanding. I mean, we do a lot of work across the country here in Canada. But like I say, our work is expanding into other parts of the globe and it's a really exciting time for us. So thank you very much for the opportunity to share our story.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you, and I just have three fire round closing questions for you before we wrap up. What is an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Steve DeRoy: I've just been listening to an audiobook recently, it was recommended to me by one of my business partners and it's called “Start With Why” by an author named Simon Sinek. And it's a really great book for leaders that are looking to take action and it gets to the why: why is the work that you're doing so important? It's not about the “how”. It's not about the “when”. It's not about the “where”. But “why” is it so important? So that's been profound for me lately.
Kamea Chayne: What do you tell yourself to stay motivated and inspired?
Steve DeRoy: Well, I try to keep a positive outlook on life. I try to wake up in the morning and think about how grateful I am for being able to do the work that I do and that it's so diverse and different each day.
And so I think just waking up, being grateful is how I get out of bed. I try to think about one good thing about why I'm grateful for the day and that usually gets me going in the morning.
Kamea Chayne: And what makes you most hopeful for our planet and world at the moment?
Steve DeRoy: I'm very hopeful that indigenous communities are leveraging these types of tools, advancing their interests forward and are active in these processes, and are building economies. So a lot of my work is influencing that change. I think the world is better at recognizing the importance of indigenous perspectives of space and place. I'm hopeful for that. And like I said, I'm very grateful that I'm a part of that.
Kamea Chayne: And what final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Steve DeRoy: Keep your head up and don't be afraid to fail. Try often. Keep moving forward.
