"If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it." (Sitting Bull). In this pilot project we locate Lakota historical, cultural and recreational areas. Lakota Land includes establishing a geodatabase, setting up an online interactive map, supporting the formation of a committee to handle sensitive sites, and investigating links of Native sites with geospatial features - such as water or mountains.
For the Lakota Land project we are: a) preserving sites from destruction; b) advancing the understanding of geospatial technology among the Native American public; c) fostering Native identity; d) providing a tool for tribal decision making; e) educating Native and non-native communities; f) providing a database for researchers of Native culture/history; g) offering alternatives to socio-economic problems and h) research geospatial patterns to identify additional sites.
This project has a broad impact. It already involves the community, tribal pre-college and undergraduate geoscience education. Volunteers and students interview community members and acquire GPS coordinates of Native American sites and map them. They also research the importance of the sites. This program helps reservation residents to enter and advance in geoscience careers.
This project has the intellectual merit of increasing the understanding of geoscience by tribal residents. We are developing unique procedures for documenting Lakota cultural sites: a working database and an interactive online map of sites approved for publication. This map is a tool to acquaint tribal and nontribal members with geospatial technology, Lakota values and culture.
This project is co-funded by the Office of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) at the National Science Foundation.
