(Of) Indigenous Maps in the Amazon: For a Decolonial Cartography

Abstract

There are mappings of indigenous lands, mappings with indigenous participation, and mappings made by indigenous people, all of them resulting from cartographic intentions, mapping motives, and distinct meanings of spatiality. Starting from the questioning around the drives of the subject towards his search for knowledge of the space and its mapping, this article seeks to both identify the key points that these three types of mapping typically resemble and intersect, as well as to distinguish and debate them while highlighting maps made by indigenous people. This approach is based on interpretations of Mebêngôkre (Kayapó) and A’uwe (Xavante) mappings, seeking to understand them as a device of spatial organizations and representations. In doing so, we (re)position indigenous peoples as cartographer subjects who possess and produce cartographic/geographic knowledge while we question the Eurocentric legacy, expressed in an exclusivity of official/academic cartography.