GeoMap

Geomap was created in 1996 at the University of California by Professor Bernard Nietschmann and a small group of young cartographers to provide mapmaking training and skills to indigenous peoples and local communities. GeoMap takes the best cartographers, the best cartography knowledge, and the best appropriate mapping technology to provide university-based assistance to community-based projects.

Maps are power. Either you will map or you will be mapped. If you are mapped by those who desire to own or control your land and resources, their map will display their justifications for their claims, not yours. Cartographers routinely worked for the governments and corporations of the invaders and occupiers. Recently, however, a new generation of cartographers is inventing a New Cartography, based on a commitment to help indigenous peoples and communities protect the world's two fundamental resources: biological diversity and cultural diversity. The New Cartography is being done using small, powerful computers and handheld GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers to work with and train indigenous peoples who wish to map their traditional knowledge, their territories, and their resources. More powerful and accurate than almost anything that exists in most central governments in most capital cities of the world, this new technology can be carried in a backpack, and with solar panels, used anywhere.

GeoMap began working with the Miskito people in their autonomous region of noth-eastern Nicaragua to help them map their traditional sea and coral reef territories. GeoMap's second project was to work with the communities of northeastern Costa Rica to map their aquatic environments and resources. The Maya Atlas is GeoMap's third project.