You may have heard about the work that Google Earth Outreach has been doing with the endangered Surui tribe of the Amazon. The tribe has been compiling a media-rich map with layers of photos, text, and video about areas of important significance on their 600,000-acre reserve. The tribe faces encroachment of illegal mining and logging, and is using Google Earth as a means of outreach, and they presented their work at the Bioneers Conference this past weekend.

This high-profile collaboration has led to additional efforts on behalf of other indigenous peoples in the Amazon and elsewhere, including the First Nations of Canada. The idea of ethnographic mapping is to combine the knowledge of the land that is passed down from generation to generation with high-tech mapping tools in order to record important sites. Elders are interviewed for details on ceremonial sites, hunting grounds, and different places and plants that are key to living off the land. This effort then becomes recorded in order to show the deep connections to the land, including the indigenous spiritual connections to place. The benefits of the recorded knowledge are that it provides a means to define areas that can then be defended against resource exploitation.

The work of the Surui tribe has been ongoing since 2008. The map is supposed to go public later this week at earth.google.com/outreach.

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