Want to Know Your Land's History? This App Tells You Your Land's Indigenous Heritage
With the help of technology, it has become possible to look back through time and discover any cultural heritage and history of one's country or state.
Currently, there is an app that could tell you the Indigenous heritage of your city, neighborhood, or even street.
Native Land app is a Canadian nonprofit that has mapped Indigenous territories across North America, South American, and parts of Europe and Asia, as reported by We are Mitu.
The app also shows how traditional owners of the land organized their settlements before colonization has broken in what is known as the Americas.
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Native Land has also its website and seeks to map the Indigenous languages, treaties, and territories across the Island.
For instance, you might type New York, New York and discover that the five boroughs are actually traditional Lenape and Haudenosaunee areas.
On the other hand, California was populated by a wide variety of people who were conquered by Spanish of assimilated into mestizo culture through religion and language.
This show proof that when a group of people chant, "America for the Americans" on a certain ethnic group, they should be reminded that the land is and always has been Indigenous.
On the Native Land website and app, users can enter their ZIP code or Canadian or American name for any town.
The digital map will zoon in on your inquiry, color-code it, and pull-up data on the area's Indigenous history, original language, and its tribal ties.
The project is created by Victor Temprano from British Colombia, Canada.
Temprano said the idea came to him while he was driving near his home, which is a traditional Squamish territory.
Temprano said he saw many signs in the English.
Meanwhile, the Squamish original places' names are in parentheses below.
He then suddenly thought why is the English language not the one in brackets.
The app is still an ongoing project.
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"This map does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations. To learn about definitive boundaries, contact the nations in question," the app's statement was quoted in a report.
The statement added that the map is perfect and is still work in progress.
The creators of the app then urged contributors to send fixes should they find any errors.
There were hundreds of ethnic groups scattered in Canada, Mexico, and United States before the European colonizers such as Britain, France, Spain landed on the said lands.
A Facebook user tried the app and she was given with different land information based on the locations she referenced in the text.
Meanwhile, education about Indigenous peoples of the Americas is hardly comprehensive or thoughtful.
One student said that their parents regularly called out colonial "crap" in their curriculum, according to a report.
One student also said that they learned about the Indigenous peoples' genocide and further their learnings in high school and college.
They then realized that a lot of history is omitted in schools right now.