New online maps documents Native American ancestral territory at Fowler
On Wednesday, January 15, Fowler Museum curator of archaeology Wendy Giddens Teeter will discuss the pioneering work of the online project Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles and her experience of engaging stakeholders around the city in uncovering multiple historical layers of Los Angeles. She will also speak about national and international repatriation efforts; her work as UCLA’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Coordinator, which has led to the repatriation of the remains of more than 2,000 Native Americans to their communities; and the integration of indigenous first voices in exhibitions, such as Carrying our Ancestors Home.
"Current literature on indigenous Los Angeles rarely comes from those doing work inside tribal communities.
Wendy Giddens Teeter worked alongside various indigenous community members in Los Angeles to put together a digital story map of the region. She will discuss her project "Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles" at the Fowler Museum on Wednesday, providing insight on accurate story telling for indigenous communities. (Courtesy of The Fowler Museum) Wendy Teeter, curator of archaeology at the Fowler Museum, will be giving a lecture at the Fowler Museum on Wednesday to discuss the web-based project “Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles.”
The project includes a series of digital story maps and utilizes indigenous artwork, photographs and videos to chronicle the cultural histories of indigenous LA communities including the Gabrieleño/Tongva and Fernandeño Tataviam nations. By collaborating with tribal community members to create the online maps, Teeter said the project aims to tell stories from the indigenous perspective, providing a resource for accurately depicted information about the communities.
“We wanted to be able to tell … more complicated stories from the community themselves,” Teeter said. “So forefronting their voices and using mapping as a way for people to one, … connect with it … and two, to get them some layered stories so that they can see that there are many things that happen all around the city and they’re just not always aware of them.”
In order to maintain an indigenous perspective, Teeter said they worked closely with the Tongva and Tataviam communities in the process of creating the maps. Therefore, the tribes were able to curate how their ancestral territory would be visualized in the online exhibits, Teeter said.
Mishuana Goeman, who worked as a co-principal investigator on the project, said the team worked closely with the Tataviam’s formal government to construct the tribe’s story map. Because the project contained a map of the Tribal President Rudy Ortega’s lineage, she said it was completed under his tutelage and the Elders Council would consistently review it. Accordingly, each map has its own flair based on its community and based on what each community needs and wants, she said.
Since all of the information shared in the project is held by the native communities, Teeter said the permissions to hold community events about the story maps were only able to be given because of the close relationships that had been made with individual tribal members. Desiree Martinez, a member of the Tongva nation who worked as an advisor on the project, said the team wanted to approach the Tongva first and to gauge their interest in the story maps since UCLA is built on Tongva land."— Matthew Chu, Jan. 13, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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