Counter-Mapping Methodology
As defined by political ecologist Nancy Lee Peluso (1995) and cartographic theorist Denis Wood (1992), counter-mapping appropriates official spatial techniques to challenge dominant territorial narratives, reveal suppressed ecological connections, and contest legal structures of state dispossession.
"Maps do not simply represent territory; they create and enforce property regimes. In nineteenth-century Illinois, the Public Land Survey System erased relational ecological landmarks to commodify the continent."
Relational Waters vs. Rectilinear Grids
This exhibit contrasts two competing spatial ontologies:
- Indigenous Relational Space: Seasonal mobility structured by river depth, wild rice harvesting, spring fish runs, and autumn floodplain bison hunting. Territorially bounded through mutual agreements and obligations between sovereign peoples and living watersheds.
- Settler Cartesian Enclosure: The Jeffersonian Public Land Survey System (PLSS) enacted by the General Land Office, dividing land into 6-mile-square townships and 160-acre quarter sections indifferent to river contours.
Archival References
- Charles C. Royce (1899), Indian Land Cessions in the United States, 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Cessions 44, 77, 110, 147, 175, 187).
- Charles J. Kappler (1904), Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. II, Washington: Government Printing Office.
- Helen Hornbeck Tanner (1987), Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, University of Oklahoma Press.
- Black Hawk (1833), Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, ed. J. B. Patterson.
Land Acknowledgment
The Illinois and Wabash River basins are the ancestral territories of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankeshaw, Wea, Miami, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Sauk, Meskwaki, Odawa, and Ojibwe nations. This application honors their continuing presence, sovereignty, and living ties to these lands and waterways.