FINAL CONFERENCE AGENDA WITH LINKS
2009 Indigenous Mapping Network Conference
June 14 - 16, 2009
Hosted by the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin
Radisson Hotel and Conference Center
Green Bay, WI
Welcome
The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin welcomes conference attendees, speakers, and vendors to Green Bay, WI for the 2009 Mapping for Indigenous Communities (Indigenous Mapping Network) conference. We hope to not only provide an educational and fascinating conference for everyone, but also to share a brief look at Oneida culture and what life is like in Northeast Wisconsin.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Tuscarora/Oneida Room
9:00 am - 5:00 pm Registration
Three Clans Entrance
10:00 am - 12:00 pm Applications of Mapping and GIS Technologies in a First Nations Environment - Steven DeRoy, The Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
Presentation
12:00 - 1:00 pm Lunch Break (On your own)
12:00 - 1:00 pm WI GIS User Group Board Meeting
1:00 - 2:00 pm Federal Funding Sources - Dave Gerczak, Army Corps of Engineers Detroit District
Presentation
Sole-Proprietorship - Celene Elm, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin
(Presentation not provided)
2:00 - 5:00 pm Mapping Tribal Law - Eric Skenandore and Celene Elm, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin
Use a Hands-on GIS approach to explore concepts unique to American Indian governments. Learn to use data sets that tribal communities can acquire, share, and use for resource management. Policy elements covered included special data needs of tribes, management, data-sharing policies, and forms. Understands the sovereign authority of tribes via sole proprietorship policies. Workshop is suitable for planning directors, administrators, and GIS planners interested in geospatial technologies adapted to the needs of tribal governments. (Presentation not provided)
Car Tour of Cultural Centers on Oneida Nation of Wisconsin Reservation
Turtle/Bear Room
5:00 - 6:00 pm Tailgate Buffet Dinner
Tour of Lambeau Field
7:00 - 9:00 pm Meet & Greet - Meet in Hotel Lobby 45 minutes prior
Monday, June 15, 2009
Turtle/Bear Room
7:00 am - 5:00 pm Registration
8:00 - 9:00 am Opening CeremonyThree Clans Entrance
Color Guard Presentation: Veterans of Foreign Wars Department Wisconsin Robert Cornelius Post / VFW WI Post 7784 - Andrew John (US Army); Gerald L. Kuroski (USMC); Michael Hill (US Navy - Vietnam); Frank Cornelius (USMC -Korea, Vietnam); Cletus Ninham (US Army Airborne - Vietnam); Ben Vahn (US Army/USAF - Korea); James Begay (USMC - WWII, Korea, Vietnam); Ruth J. Wapu (USAWAC)
Welcoming: Ron Hill Jr - Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Tribal Councilman
Drum: Gii Taas'se Singers, Stockbridge Munsee
Presentation of Gift by Hauiti Hakopa of Aotearoa (New Zealand) from Maori Elders to Ron Hill Jr, Councilman with the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin for all Indigenous people in the U.S.
9:00 - 10:00 am Mapping the Heavens and the Earth: Spatial Information Technology and the Maori Worldview - Hauiti Hakopa, New Zealand
To those unfamiliar with the world of spatial information technology, the acronyms GIS, GPS, RS and SDI may be intimidating. SDI or Spatial Data Infrastructure is merely an infrastructure for managing spatial or geographically referenced information. It comprises a collection of tools and techniques, which include the use of GIS (Geographical Information Systems), GPS (Global Positioning Systems) and RS (Remote Sensing) for doing just that: managing spatial information at a local, national, regional and global level. Current uses of SDI around the world are based on a very narrow monocultural view of that world; it also represents a very narrow view of land and disregards the way in which Indigenous peoples, such as Maori view the landscape.
Western concepts of land are easily managed using modern spatial information tools such as GIS and SDI wherein land is measured in mathematical terms and is capable of being delineated using conventional mapping tools common in western societies. In contrast, Indigenous peoples refer to a cultural landscape or terrain that spans several generations and involves a spiritual and material connectedness to land that is not easily represented in GIS or SDI. Similarly, Maori are bound to the landscape; they are bound to the places they come from their turangawaewae. Moreover, they are bound by whakapapa to the heavens above and the earth below.
This presentation discusses whether the Maori worldview and notions about cultural landscapes can be represented within modern spatial information infrastructures without compromising any of its cultural uniqueness, identity or integrity. (presentation link tba)
10:00 -11:00 am The Karen People of Eastern Burma: A Study of GIS for Human Survival - Joseph T. Forrest, Resource GeoServices LLC
For over 60 years, the Karen people of eastern Burma have suffered under a campaign of genocide by successive Burmese military regimes. Recently, relief organizations by the Karen and other nationalities, have adopted the GIS technology to document and present their situation to the world. Mapping efforts include locating and describing (1) human rights violations, (2) destruction of displacement of villages and their populations, (3) medical needs and health/nutritional conditions, and (4) the situation of indigenous schools. GIS technology is also being used to monitor activities of the Burmese military, its construction of a logistical network and areas in which it is setting landmines.
Other indigenous peoples in the country are under attack, and the government has declared its intention of eradicating these groups and making Myanmar purely Burman. the Karen are working closely with these other endangered peoples to extend their use of GIS and document their plight to the world. The GIS network that is being developed will eventually include all indigenous areas of Burma; it will serve to document their circumstances of these groups and as a planning tools for the eventual reintegration of indigenous peoples back into Burmese society post military dictatorship. Presentation
11:00 - 12:00 pm Panel Presentation: Emergency Planning & GIS: A Menominee Case Study - Paul Crocker, Menominee Tribal Enterprises
The Menominee Reservation was struck by an EF-3 tornado in June, 2007. This presentation will examine the role of GIS in the response to this event, paying particular attention to the lessons learned as a result of this experience. Presentation
Menominee Moves to GIS Gaining Trust & Taxing Issues - Paul Cegelski, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin
The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin is currently building an effective GIS infrastructure to aid in tribal issues and provide accurate data to help preserve the past and assist the future. This presentation will focus on the process to upgrade the Community Development Department from a mainly CAD operation to a centralized GIS environment. Topics will include: tribal issues, parcel development, weighing cultural & social attitudes, and sharing the data and other issues that have surfaced in the six months since starting this process. Presentation
12-1:00 pm Box Lunch during Sessions
1:00 - 2:00 pm Integration of GIS Data Management, Collection, and Analysis: Organization-Wide Empowerment - Edward Durbeck, Durbeck GIS Group
The Pueblo of Zuni sought to upgrade their GIS system from a single PC to a network-wide, interdepartmental GIS infrastructure and to create a library of geodatabases for housing the tribe's GIS data. The work included the development of customized geodatabases and GIS software for specialized applications relating to activities such as a range management, water resource monitoring, and cultural resource preservation. The structural architecture associated with the GIS software and databases composing this system allows all tribal departments and programs to directly access all GIS data and to utilize GIS data management and analytical tools for accomplishing their specific needs and objectives.
At Zuni, both technical and non-technical staff were trained in the collection, analysis, and presentation of GIS data using the newly implemented GIS infrastructure. The infrastructure included the development of a spatial data application coupled with ArcGIS Desktop software. The combination of these methodologies with the customized geodatabases included in the tribe's GIS data library give the tribe the ability to integrate GIS technologies into a multitude of it's natural resource management tasks. Presentation
2:00 - 3:00 pm Managing Utilities Information with GIS/Conducting a GIS Needs Assessment - Sam Pociask, McMahon Associates
The presentation will cover the basics of a GIS needs assessment. This will include the components of conducting an assessment, the importance of an assessment and the outcomes of the assessment.
The presentation will also cover using GIS to manage utility infrastructure information. GIS allows utilities the ability to not only view facility locations but also the ability to link non-GIS information such as record drawings, inspection reports, and site photos to the GIS information. Managing utility facilities information through a GIS also provides a powerful maintenance and planning tool for the utility. Presentation
3:00 - 4:00 pm Cultural Sensitive Resource Mapping - Dr. Donna Miranda Begay, Tubatulabals of Kern Valley
The Kern County of Governments (located in California Central Valley) and Tubatulabals (Tu-ba-tu-la-bals) of Kern Valley have developed a California Transportation (CalTrans) grant project to focus on the following: bringing 47 tribal governments (both federally and non-federally recognized) and 8 County Governments to discuss culturally sensitive resource mapping, Tribal environmental justice transportation planning, building on-going collaboration, and working rapport. In this workshop, the approach and current project regarding safe-guarding of cultural sensitive information, Tribes' involvement and non-involvement, impact of legislation - Tribal, Federal, and state, GIS/GPS standards and challenges, and other project related topics. This is a tribal led grant project. Dr. Donna Miranda-Begay is the project manager for this "Tribal environmental justice transportation planning" grant project. She has extensive knowledge in GPS/GIS and working with Tribal, Federal, State and Local governments. Presentation
4:40 - 5:40 pm Northeast Stone Star Maps. An Indigenous Enigma - Noel Ring, Retired Geographer
Seventy stars in three unique constellation designs replicated in stone punctuate landscape at a dozen sites in New England and maritime Canada. First discerned in Vermont via aerial photography, each reflect complex encompasses two wedges and a kite-shaped feature outlined by boulders often linked by stone walls. Northeastern Indigenous star lore offers only partial analogies to portions of the lithic celestial maps, many under land development threats. Nothing in recorded European cosmological cartography or colonial cadastral traditions provide precedence. Funded multidisciplinary research by a team of scientists and Native American scholars will help determine the age and origin of the massive start charts. Use of lidar, pattern recognition software and high resolution satellite imagery may aid in mapping geographic distribution of these likely largest maps on earth. Presentation
5:30 - 7:00 pm Free Time
7:00 - 10:00 pm Banquet Dinner
Research Scientist with the Department of Environment and Climate Change in New South Wales, Australia
One of the challenges of community mapping for Indigenous people is the fine line between recording information that can help manage a cultural landscape, and compromising access and control of knowledge. Additionally, mapping community values, just for the sake of mapping, does not automatically lead to better land management unless that information is targeted toward the needs of making management decisions. This is especially an issue in New South Wales, Australia, as achieving a community outcome invariably involves applying for government funding and working with various land management stakeholders with competing objectives. VIP mapping is an approach to dealing with these issues by compartmentalizing mapped information into themes based on its intended use and the need to respect knowledge. These themes, are defined using conservation planning principles that help lead a community through a strategic decision making process. VIP stand for the three key themes of the approach: values, interests, and priorities. This talk outlines how these theme can be used as part of assisting a community to strategically target what to map and record, separate information that should stay restricted to the community and that which can drive an outcome, and use the information to negotiate more effectively in a landscape of competing natural resource management agendas.
Oneida Longhouse Singers and Social
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Turtle/Bear Room
9:00 - 10:00 am Panel Presentation: The Tribal Statistical Areas Program (TSAP) and other Geographic Programs for the Upcoming 2010 Census - Colleen Joyce & Mary Lenaiyasa, U.S. Census Bureau
The Tribal Statistical Areas Program (TSAP), a program of the US Census Bureau, is part of an ongoing effort to enhance the reporting of meaningful statistical data for American Indian and Alaska Native areas. As part of the program, tribes have the opportunity to identify and delineate the geographic statistical areas and block boundaries from which the Census Bureau will tabulate data for the Year 2010 Census and the subsequently occurring American Community Survey (ACS). Meaningful statistical data from the 2010 Census and the ACS can provide tribes with a tool to help make informed decisions, and plan for services such as transportation, health, and housing.
The program specifically provides for the delineation of Alaska Native village statistical areas (ANVSAs), Oklahoma Tribal statistical areas (OTSAs), tribal designated statistical areas (TDSAs), state designated tribal statistical areas (SDTSAs), and sub-reservation statistical areas: tribal subdivisions on OTSAs, tribal census tracts and tribal block groups on American Indian reservations (AIRs) and/or off-reservation trust lands (ORTLs) for federally recognized American Indian tribes, and census designated places (CDPs) for federally recognized American Indian tribes with an AIR, ORTL, OTSA. Presentation
10:00 - 12:00 pm Planning Summit -Ted Jojola, University of New Mexico
Ted Jojola (Isleta Pueblo) is Regents' Professor at the University of New Mexico and Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University, where he is a member of the faculty of the Community and Regional Planning Program and the School of Planning, respectively. The former director of the UNM Native American studies program, Dr. Jojola now teaches courses such as Indigenous Planning, Planning of Native Lands, and Human Settlements. He has published numerous articles and chapter on topics relating to indigenous planning, stereotyping and economic development. He is chair and co-founder of the Indigenous Planning Division, American Planning Association. (Presentation not provided)
12:00 - 1:00 pm Lunch Break
1:00 - 2:00 pm Grassroots Land-Recovery Efforts on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - David Bartecchi, Village Earth
David Bartecchi, Executive Director for Village Earth, a community-development organization based in Fort Collins, Colorado, will be presenting on grassroots land-recovery efforts on the Pine ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Home of the Oglala Lakota Nation, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was established during the 1876 Fort Larmie Treaty and encompasses a territory of approximately 2 million acres of the Northern Great Plains in southwest South Dakota. With a population of over 26,000, the reservation exists today as one of the poorest places in the United States and lags far behind other parts of the United States in virtually all standards of human well-being. Presentation
2:00 - 3:00 pm Using Watersheds to Protect Cultural Resources: How to Map What Should Not Be Mapped - Christopher Overdorf, Jones & Jones Architects Landscape Architects and Planners
The protection of cultural resource is a priority for tribal planners. This priority is often not met by non-tribal planners or governmental agencies that want to know exact sites where these sacred resources are located. the desire for spatially explicit GIS-based features that integrate into other analysis models creates a conflict with how best to communicate the sensitivity of cultural resources.
In this presentation, a custom-made GIS-based tool currently being utilized by the Nisqually tribe will be demonstrated. The tool allows tribal planners to catalog and communicate the presence of sacred tribal resources to non-tribal entities without detailing their exact locations. Instead of using typical GIS feature types (points or polylines), a hydrographic modeling extension to ArcGIS called ArcHydro can create watershed-based analysis units at multiple scales giving tribal planners much more flexibility to communicate the presence of local cultural resources to non-tribal entities without divulging their exact location. Presentation
3:00 - 3:30 pm Break
3:30 - 4:30 pm The Aboriginal Sites Decision Support Tool -Mal Ridges, Department of Environment and Climate Change, NSW, Australia
Archeological predictive modeling has been variously used in the past to map site potential, and even help facilitate site protection in some instances. However, the approach has been hampered by academic debates about the factors affecting where people located activities in the past, rather than generating information that could improve Indigenous communities' ability to manage their heritage. The ASDST seeks to redress this by using the technique to generate new spatial products that address the key issues faced by Indigenous communities caring for their heritage across NSW, Australia. the tool models site potential for different feature types in a pre1750 (i.e. pre-settlement) landscape, and then modifies the models to take into account land clearing, agriculture, mining, urbanization, etc. the difference between the pre1750 and post-settlement versions allows accumulated impacts on sites to be mapped and quantified. Additionally, a survey gap analysis tools is used to identify where communities can target assessment to combine landscape coverage with high site potential and minimal historical impact. A final product partitions the landscape into regions with similar suites of site type, permitting representativeness of conservation mechanisms to be assessed. this suite of products arms Indigenous communities with key information for strategic site management. (Presentation not provided)
4:30 - 5:30 pm Panel Presentation: Helping Tribal Government with GIS Needs - Nick Stadnyk, Applied Data Consultants, Inc.
ADC has had the opportunity to work with a number of Tribal entities in the upper Midwest Projects have included GIS training, web mapping, GIS needs assessment, and data and application development. We have discovered that tribes have unique issues and core values that are different from other governments. Understanding these differences can help focus the objectives of any tribal projects. This presentation is focused on describing some of these projects and how they fit into a larger, regional context as well as sharing some of our project experience in working with the Tribes. Presentation
Land Management Strategies for Tribal Governments -
Tribal Governments face many of the same challenges other governments face including planning, natural resource management, economic development and easements. However, Tribal Governments face a series of unique challenges including preserving sacred sites and justice.
Tribes have been adopting GIS technology to help face these challenges and as other will discuss it can be a powerful tool. However, GIS data is usually not developed at the precision required to manage many conflicts that might result in court. We see this in county assessor’s offices all across the country. To address this, many forward thinking counties are beginning to reconcile their legal records developed with land surveys with their GIS data to create a Cadastral Fabric.
In this presentation, I will address these issues as well as the technology and practices that can help Tribal Governments better manage precious lands. Presentation
5:30 - 6:30 pm Round Table Discussion
6:30 - 7:00 pm Free Time
7:00 - 10:00 pm Dinner & Closing Ceremony; Presentation of Awards
