This is perhaps the glue of sentiment and perception that has most distinct roots in Native or indigenous cultures and peoples.
Considering the nomadic nature of modern American life - nearly 20 percent, or 43 million, of all Americans move within any given year - it is significant that Native peoples tend to maintain strong ties to their homelands. Americans manifest as a free people who continue to freely crisscross the hemisphere, now not only going west but north and south and east as well - following the weather and economic security as primary motivations, but all too regularly unattached to place.
For Native peoples, the geography of origin, consistent with culture and history, is always imbued with meaning and identity. Even after the many instances of warfare and forced relocation, the love of the land is carried and taught through the generations. To the present day, many hundreds of Native cultures sustain substantial knowledge of their places of origin and their places of residence. This is found in the memory of elder men and women, families and clans; and sometimes in indigenous and Western scholars who have retained and regained the ancient languages, the traditional stories of creation and other cosmic eras and who value the knowledge of place that resides in the people.
This geography of the heart, interpreted by the layering of cultural and empirical knowledge of countless human generations living ''in place,'' has good applicability in the sciences and arts. Oral and ethno-historical information, in the memory of events and in the descriptive and adaptive nature of the Native languages, is one source of study. Geographic concepts and methodologies provide other avenues of study.
The re-examination of historical and ancient maps, as well as the elaboration of new maps articulated by the actual knowledge of the geography by indigenous elders, is manifested in an exciting new movement among Native communities. Several conferences have been held on ideas and projects emerging in indigenous geography. The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and the Association of American Geographers, among others, have held seminars and initiated projects; and in mid-March 2004, the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping gathered nearly 200 indigenous community experts from dozens of Native nations in 26 countries to share ideas and methods of incorporating tribal community knowledge in mapmaking. This represents a remarkable accomplishment that is opening up inspirational pathways to better understanding the Indian world.
Warm congratulations are offered this week to the student leaders of the Native American Youth Council of North High School in Phoenix, Ariz., who have initiated an Indigenous Peoples Geography Project on their organization's Web site. The NAYC's innovative new project launched with an early map of the Phoenix area depicting the ancient irrigation canals and settlements of the Huhukam civilization that predated the city and inhabited the territory continuously for over 1,500 years. The Huhukam are considered ancestors of the present-day O'odham nations.
Brian Bex, Dine' student at North High School, serves as Webmaster for the Youth Council's Web site (www.northhighnatives.com). ''I believe this project will allow more people to gain an understanding of the importance of the land they walk upon each and every day here in the valley,'' Bex said.
Tupac Enrique, adviser to the student group, commented in the group's Web release: ''Our intent is to open the eyes of our Native students and the community at large to the validity of the Native systems of geography and cartography, systems of knowledge.''
Again, we commend Bex, Enrique and their colleagues at North High for their visionary leadership in an exciting project. This welcome initiative by a club of Native high school students deserves national attention. We hope it will stimulate similar projects by Native students in schools all throughout Indian country.
The concept of a geographic exploration fully or principally guided by the knowledge and linguistic interpretation of indigenous inhabitants, both culture-bearers and intellectuals, has begun to circulate widely. Power mapping by indigenous cartographers, using a wide range of traditional and ultramodern techniques and equipment, is in movement. At the community level and at the NMAI, among other institutions, a convergence of philosophies, technical methods and pedagogical experience is coming to bear on the subject. Indigenous geography provides the basis and many of the tools for a deeper appreciation of the Indian Americas.
To learn, ascertain and know the truth of any thing is a good definition of research. Places have history, and in the northern half of the American continent - conceived as Turtle Island by several cultures - the indigenous presence reveals itself with vigor. The students at North High, for instance, chose to feature the revealing map in ''honor of the ancestral settlements in the Valley of the Sun of the O'odham Nations.''
Love and appreciation of place begets intense curiosity and is a motivation for understanding geography, history and, most intriguingly, cultural meaning. Truthful, accurate and sincere traditional knowledge, well-shared and well-depicted, can also be a strong source of protection over lands and territories. Defining the knowledge of long-term inhabitation provokes respect and consciously educates the tribal base and surrounding populations.
Indigenous geography, as Bex reminds us, ''will allow more people to gain an understanding of the importance of the land they walk upon.''
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