Visualizing the Cherokee Homeland through Indigenous Historical GIS: An Interactive Map of James Mooney's Ethnographic Fieldwork and Cherokee Collective Memory

Abstract

In 1887, the Bureau of American Ethnology appointed James Mooney to work among the Eastern Band of Cherokee. From 1887 to 1916, Mooney documented the sites and stories of the Cherokee homeland as shared with him by members of the community. Mooney's working maps and field notes were recently discovered at the archive of the Smithsonian Institution. For this thesis, I combine Mooney's work with Cherokee collective memory to re-interpret the stories of the Cherokee homeland according to Duyuktv, a Cherokee theoretical framework and paradigm. Asking the question, "How can the Mooney archive be transformed into a digital map that will engage and inspire Cherokee youth to learn and explore the stories of their homeland?" I demonstrate what is possible when Cherokee perspective is synthesized with geospatial technologies to present the ancient stories of the Cherokee homeland in a way that weaves traditional and modern culture into its components.