Niagara Escarpment Indigenous Cultural Mapping Project

The Niagara Escarpment is one of four Biosphere Reserves in Ontario. Each is mapped upon both traditional and historic Indigenous lands, however, little has been done to research, document, and integrate Indigenous knowledge and experience, heritage sites, and areas that are important to the protection of Indigenous biodiversity into the maps and materials that are used by UNESCO, First Nations, municipalities, and other public agencies and organizations with important interests within these areas.
​
As a result, from January to June 2017 Plenty Canada partnered with the Niagara Escarpment Commission to organize engagement meetings with Indigenous communities living within the Niagara Escarpment to:

1. explain the origins and objectives of UNESCO’s Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, and
2. to assess interest and facilitate ideas for increasing Indigenous participation in the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve.

Two meetings were held, the first at Six Nations Polytechnic in Six Nations of the Grand River and the second at the Bruce Peninsula National Park Visitor Centre in Tobermory. The consensus that emerged from these two meetings supported Indigenous participation and prescribed that a “story telling and mapping” project should be the first recommended pragmatic program developed to begin restoring Indigenous knowledge, visibility, and character to the Niagara Escarpment. Therefore, Plenty Canada is proceeding with an Indigenous cultural mapping program that will layer a template of information upon the geographic map of the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, inclusive of Manitoulin Island.

​Cultural mapping is a concept and process used by organizations, including UNESCO, to describe a variety of research methods, techniques, and tools applied to the identification, description, and portrayal of tangible and intangible cultural resources and assets, including those of distinct populations, within select landscapes around the world. Within the context of the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, Plenty Canada will work together and with its growing network of allies to document, celebrate, and safeguard important Indigenous heritage resources.

​Cultural mapping is emerging as an exciting interdisciplinary field that is fully compliant with and supported by the multi-media capabilities of the Internet. As such, we intend to produce an interactive map of the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve layering upon the land appropriate knowledge, relationships, and histories of meaningful Indigenous locations to re-establish Indigenous experience and voice upon this ancient and special geologic formation.

---

​Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council
​for supporting us with this initiative!