Mapping Our Land: A Guide to Making Your Own Maps of Communities and Traditional Lands

Communities all over the world are discovering that maps provide a valuable tool for recording local knowledge and discussing land-use issues. In a participatory approach to mapping, community members design the mapping project and make maps according to their own needs.

Mapping Our Land describes all stages of the community mapping process from setting the goals of the project to completion of the maps.

Alix Flavelle has taught mapping to aboriginal peoples around the world. She outlines the range of themes that communities choose to address and offers examples of how they have presented their local knowledge on maps. A variety of map-making techniques are explored, as well as guidelines for choosing which techniques best suit the purpose of the mapping project.

Clear step-by-step instructions are provided for:

• Basic principles of map-making
• Exploring cultural elements of maps
• How to organize the community
• Making sketch maps on paper or mylar
• Using topographic maps
• Making three-dimensional models
• How to do a compass survey
• Using a Global Positioning System (GPS)
• Interpreting aerial, radar and satellite images
• Drawing the final map
• Land rights, resource management and protecting local knowledge.

Accessible and full of practical information and ideas, this book is a toolbox intended to help communities design and complete a mapping project that fits their unique culture, landscape and situation, and their purpose for making maps.

Available from Amazon: Mapping Our Land

Mapping is Power

Set in the Altai Republic of Russia in southern Siberia, Mapping is Power follows cultural specialist Maya Erlenbaeva and shaman Maria Amanchina as they visit sacred sites near Kosh Agach. Indigenous people are mapping their sacred sites to protect them. This scene is a preview of Standing on Sacred Ground, a 4-part series produced by the Sacred Land Film Project, which will profile sacred land struggles around the world. www.sacredland.org

Multilingual thesaurus on land tenure

The question of land tenure is returning on the agenda and many countries are showing renewed interest in the different ways of accessing natural resources with a view to eventually introducing land reforms, in the context of food security, world-wide poverty alleviation, environmental protection or quality of life. This is why the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural anmd Rural Cooperation (CTA)  has prepared this multilingual thesaurus. This comprehensive reading covers the socio-cultural differences in the field of land tenure of the linguistic contexts in which they are found.

It is hoped that this publication will contribute to clarifying the debate on land subjects as well as to making the related field interventions more efficient thanks to the presentation of an unambiguous or unequivocal terminology of the various subject matters related to land tenure.

It can serve as a reference document for researchers, field experts and decision-makers. The thesaurus is available in English, French and Spanish and can be ordered via CTA online catalogue.