Abstract

Mapping the Off Reservation Indian Settlements
Track: Tribal/Indigenous GIS programs
Authors: Sandra Gaskell, Danette Johnson

The purpose of this study was to plot Southern Sierra Miwuk American Indian settlements off of the proposed reservation locations in the areas surrounding the Yosemite Grant and the Yosemite National Park. Through the use of the Tribal Significance Standards in the National Register, historic locations for accounts were given geographic references in GIS. Geo-referenced buildings, sites, landscapes, objects, and places were plotted according to significance standards as they related to the historic homesteads, squatter's rights, land claims, allotments, land patents, and private property ownership by lineage descendants. Within the curation mission statements of museum repositories and indigenous archival repositories, the underlying Indian histories don't relate only to the beginning point of Anglo history, but that colonization history is just the extension of Indian History. Since the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation Archives began incorporating GIS mapping, tribal heritage has informed local government planning projections.