COUSHATTA BASKET WEAVERS: MAPPING GIFT ECONOMY

“True Indigenous formulations are non-intrusive and build frameworks of respectful coexistence by acknowledging the integrity and autonomy of the various constituent elements of the relationship.”
Alfred Taiaiake (2005)
Arizona State University (ASU), in partnership with the Coushatta Tribe Council, the Coushatta Heritage Department, archivists and community members, funded by the Stowe Endowment Fund, are collaborating on generating the geospatial data from various resources. The oral histories, archeological findings, and cultural items held in public and private collections contain data about the Coushatta ecological knowledge and land stewardship practices. Based on this data, we developed the map of basket weavers’ housing along Bayou Blue, ca. 1970s (Langley, Bates, 2021, 23). The map demonstrates the strong connection of the basket weavers’ homesteads to the swamps, rivers, and pinewoods where all basket materials were collected. The clusters of homesteads show the community density that help transfer information and knowledge to the next generations. The map intended to serve as a geo-argument to support the claim about the Coushatta basket weaving as a communal endeavor that provided the prominent contribution to a tribal economy. As the result, in 1972, the Coushatta tribe was recognized by the State of Louisiana and federally acknowledged.
This poster documents the process of producing a historic map of the Coushatta basket weavers, circa 1970 from archival materials provided by the Coushatta Heritage Department. The locations of basket weavers in 1970 were translated into coordinates (longitude and latitude) by using free Google maps. By using Python programming in the Jupiter Notebook, the data were imported from Excel into a map viewer. Producing the map by using the freely accessible Google maps as a base posed challenges of interpreting the accurate results. For Coushattas, baskets are sacred “gifts emanating from the landscape” (Pete, 75). The reduction of geo information by the Google algorithm wiped out small rivers and creeks from the interactive map. As the result, the place-based connection between homesteads and watershed was lost and with it the references to Coushattas’ cultural values and identity. To restore the narrative of the Coushatta’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), the watershed layers were reinstated through adding rivers to the map base by using commercial software (StoryMaps, Adobe Cloud). In order to convey the deep connection to land, the equitable and eminent collaboration in a cross-cultural setting and access to technology are necessary to enable communities to contribute to their presence in a digital space. Both technology and the TEK are equally important for imagining alternative futures (Duarte & Belarde-Lewis, 2015).
Mapping comes with responsibility of the researcher. Monmonier’s book (1996) demonstrates “how to lie with maps”. The margins between propaganda and colonialism vs justice and sovereignty are critical. In our work with the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, producing the map that reflects their worldview is an opportunity to overcome the colonial mentality embedded in Western scientific methods. If you look at the map of the United States that reflects a view of the dominant regime and to the map of indigenous lands you see two different stories. Modern European notions of nationality and territory misrepresent Indigenous identities (Native-Land.ca). The Western science-based GIS technology exercise signals the need for considering Indigenous Epistemology and TEK, which emerge as a collective knowledge production from the margins of nature-culture and from fragmented categories of separated disciplines to a construction of a holistic meaning. The relationships between the two knowledge systems deepen the understanding of the complexity of the local climate as a physical, biological, and social ecosystem. The impact of the TEK is getting recognized for its great value and the role it plays not only in development, but in resilience of humankind. To avoid the nature-culture dualism of the Western philosophy, the TEK offers alternative solutions for decolonization of science, such as the “regime of respect.” The knowledge is considered the commons and a classic example of pure public good. The new technology “creates a fundamental change in the nature of the resource, with the resource being converted from a nonrivalrous, non exclusionary public good into a common-pool resource that needs to be managed, monitored, and protected, to ensure sustainability and preservation” (Ostrom and Hess, 2007). The timing of our research is crucial for new generations overwhelmed by Covid 19 pandemic and other threats the humanities are facing: nuclear war, global warming, and deterioration of democracy (Chomsky, 2020). The proposed approach draws on ontology, epistemology, and feminism as the potential fields for bridging different knowledge systems in alliance that will reframe the knowledge for the youth.