Image Description

2022 Annual General Meeting

Hello everyone! Native Land Digital, a Canadian non-profit, is holding our annual AGM (Annual General Meeting) on Thursday, February 10, 2022 – and you’re invited to join us. This public meeting will run from 3:00pm – 6:00pm PST (6:00pm to 9:00pm EST) on February 10 2022. Beginning at 3:00pm we’ll be welcoming in whoever is […]

Image Description

Cross-referencing Maps to Restore Missing Voices

A guest blog post submitted by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book at Penn State University Libraries featuring the Cultural Tour of Pennsylvania and Missing Voices lesson plans developed by Erica King, curriculum specialist, and the Center’s Literary & Cultural Heritage Maps of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book is a state affiliate of […]

Image Description

Using Native-Land.ca Data for Studying Indigenous Long Island, New York

By Kristen J. Nyitray and Dana Reijerkerk, September 22, 2021 A guest blog post written and submitted by Kristen J. Nyitray and Dana Reijerkerk about their research and recently published article titled “Searching for Paumanok: A Study of Library of Congress Authorities and Classifications for Indigenous Long Island, New York.” Abstract available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2021.1929627. Kristen […]

Image Description

Our Wonderful, Wily API

Native Land Digital has provided an open, relatively easy API since the early days — ever since Canadian Encyclopedia asked us to develop an embed that they could use across their website. Since then, as the site’s data has grown, the API has also grown and it’s been used in many fantastic projects. A couple […]

Image Description

Organizing Research: The JIRA App

Here at Native Land Digital, we’ve put things together as they come. This organization and project didn’t start out with a grand vision and a comprehensive Business Plan — it started with an idea and putting in some work to get the thing moving. But, over the years, we’ve had to continually improve our processes […]

Image Description

Africa: Bit by Bit

We’re now getting underway with attempting to tackle mapping out different Indigenous groups in Africa. You can read a bit about the initial approach and how confusing everything is in the first post in this series, Approaching Africa. We’ve now had a few conversations with different people who specialize or are from different regions of […]

Image Description

Approaching Africa

When it comes to the Native Land map, we’re always trying to balance two big goals: expanding the map versus improving the map where we already have shapes. We have been getting a lot of questions about why areas in Africa are not mapped out, and while this has long been on our goal list, […]

Image Description

2021 AGM

Our Annual General Meeting will be held Sat Feb 6, 2021 4:30pm – 5:30pm. It will be held via Zoom and the general public is invited to attend! https://meet.google.com/hmo-ocna-dpj?hs=224

Image Description

Executive Director of Native Land Digital

Executive Director Full or part-time, depending on applicant Email resume to [email protected]. Native Land Digital is hiring again! We are looking for an enthusiastic and engaged Indigenous person to help lead the Native Land Digital organization. This position is for an Executive Director, which means that you will be responsible for numerous high-level functions in […]

Image Description

AGM Announcement and New Hiring Position

Hello Native-Land.ca friends and allies! We’re excited to be starting off a new year strong this year. You’ll see a lot of changes coming in the next year to Native Land, new features, and new faces. We have our Annual General Meeting on January 31st, at the Vancouver Central Library in Vancouver, BC, Canada, at […]

Image Description

Native Land 2019 Roadmap Update

Hello everyone. We had a very busy Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the site, with over 250 000 views! Thank you so much for all your support, fixes, suggestions, and comments. The site keeps growing and we keep growing as an organization. I wanted to update the roadmap – I realized I have not done so […]

Image Description

It Begins! The Birth of Native Land Digital

Hello everyone! Victor here. So, I know I have been awfully slow about it, but at last the Native Land organization has come together in such a way that we can get started for real. We received the formal incorporation documents just the other day, and we are officially now “Native Land Digital”. Lots of […]

Image Description

Native Land roadmap update

Hello everyone! It’s been a few months, and a hot summer, since I posted the roadmap. We’ve made a lot of progress since then and a lot has happened. There’s still a very long way to go, but I’m definitely more confident and feeling like things are moving. Here’s a quick list of some things […]

Image Description

Native Land Roadmap

See the update to this post from late August 2018, detailing some of the progress we’ve made. Hey everyone. In the past month or so — stemming originally from a YesMagazine article — our popularity has shot up immensely. We’ve had over 100,000 visitors in the past week, and a lot of comments, fixes, thoughts, […]

Image Description

What is “territory”?

The most popular layer on the Native Land map — and the one I have turned on by default — is the “territories” layer. This is a bit of a paradox, because it’s both the most intuitively understandable layer and the most complicated to explain. The territories layer began as something quite straightforward: mapping something […]

Image Description

Native Land, in transition

Hey! Victor here. Anyway, lately you might have noticed Native Land getting more active on social media. We have a new Communications Manager, Lydia Prince! I’ll introduce Lydia in another post, but first, people should know about what’s going on with Native Land. It’s all pretty exciting. It’s been like 3 (maybe 4?) years since […]

Image Description

The Importance of Sourcing Properly

You know, when I started Native Land, I really meant to keep up with the sources. I wanted to be diligent about it and document everything properly. The best intentions! But along the way, things fall off. You get frantic about changes, or hear a correction in person, or forget after a long, long night […]

Image Description

Land Area – Canada & Land Claims Agreements

Recently, I got an email from someone in Nunavut asking for some information about relative sizes of land agreements, compared to the overall land area of Canada. I’m not sure exactly what the information was being used for, but I thought it was interesting and I wanted to illustrate it here.

Image Description

User Archive 2-2015

This is part of a series of posts illustrating how updates are made to the site together with some really great help from users.

Image Description

A Question of Borders

One of the most distinctive things about the Native Land maps are the borders. They overlap crazily and make a huge mess of colours. Why’s that?

Image Description

Building Native-Land.ca

Read a little bit about the work behind Native-Land.ca. (post originally written for Codementor.com)

Image Description

What Year Does the Map Represent?

Does time really matter on maps? Of course it does. But how you map time depends on the purpose of your map.

Image Description

The Blog.

Victor here. This is the start of the Native Land blog.