Weaponizing Maps Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas [Hardcover]

Maps play an indispensable role in indigenous peoples’ efforts to secure land rights in the Americas and beyond. Yet indigenous peoples did not invent participatory mapping techniques on their own; they appropriated them from techniques developed for colonial rule and counterinsurgency campaigns, and refined by anthropologists and geographers. Through a series of historical and contemporary examples from Nicaragua, Canada, and Mexico, this book explores the tension between military applications of participatory mapping and its use for political mobilization and advocacy. The authors analyze the emergence of indigenous territories as spaces defined by a collective way of life--and as a particular kind of battleground.

"A gripping account of how academic research, military intelligence, and indigenous mapping projects became embroiled in the service of geopolitics. Bryan and Wood present an adventure story of geopolitical struggle right in the heart of geographical research institutions in the United States and indigenous communities in the Americas. This book is necessary reading for geographers and all social scientists interested in the ways in which knowledge production and state interests merged in the late 20th century."--John Pickles, PhD, Earl N. Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

"'Map or be mapped,' the saying goes among those associated with the wave of participatory mapping that began in the 1980s.Weaponizing Mapsgives this saying radically new meaning, with equal parts analytic depth and political charge. Readers inclined to use maps for causes of social justice will proceed fully informed of the daunting forces they are up against--from the counterinsurgency designs of the world’s most powerful military to ostensibly progressive scholars who deploy the fine tradition of participatory mapping towardlãt