Counter Mapping
Jim Enote, a traditional Zuni farmer and director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, is working with Zuni artists to create maps that bring an indigenous voice and perspective back to the land, countering Western notions of place and geography and challenging the arbitrary borders imposed on the Zuni world.
Jim Note :
“Maps have done a lot to confuse things for people. And I think more lands have been lost to native people probably through mapping than through physical conflits.”
"I wanted to do some maps that were both elegant, evocative and profoundly important to the Zuni people.
“I had no idea at the beginning that so much story would come out of this map making process. First I thought we would create some new kinds of maps that counter and challenge the notion of what maps are.”
"North does not have to be on the top. Scale is unnecessary. Was more important is the history described in these vignettes of experience. And now these are here
“These maps become a thing that help families or groups to start speaking about places. Start learning from each others and talking about places in a way that is is uniquely Zuni”
“There are maps in songs and in prayers. There are maps that are edged in stones and woven into textile and painted in ceramics.”
“The names around here are in English and Spanish. So, they completely leave off the meaning of the place. It is replacing our language and eclypsing our language and knowledge with something different, something that starts really from here. This whole constellation of what makes up a map, to me it has always been far beyond a piece of paper.”
“If my grandfa and grandma would would see the Zuni maps, I think they would have recognize quickly... ’Oh, yeah, this is what is in that song! This is what’s in those prayers! And I think as their descendents, they would have been proud”
▻https://goprojectfilms.com/films/counter-mapping
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ping @reka @odilon
