1As Vine Deloria Jr. put it in God is Red, “American Indians hold their lands—places—as having the highest possible meaning, and all their statements are made with this reference point in mind” (Deloria V. Jr., 1992 [1972]: 62). This relationship to land informs beliefs and practices because “[p]lace is a way of knowing, experiencing, and relating with the world—and these ways of knowing often guide forms of resistance to power relations that threaten to erase or destroy [their] senses of place” (Coulthard G., 2010: 79). Maps have often been described as external and imposed ways of representing and relating to land, yet Cheyenne cartographer Annita Hetoevehotohk’e Lucchesi criticizes the long-established misconception that “Indians don’t make maps and that cartography is a Western science.” Indeed, she contends that even in recent research, which is informed by less confined definitions of what constitutes a map, Indigenous mapping is too often perceived only as “an appropriation of colonial technology,” thus as a response to settler colonialism, and rarely as “the continuation of Indigenous innovation and tradition” (2018: 2). Maps can take different forms. According to J.B. Harley and David Woodward, maps can be apprehended as “graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes or events in the human world” (1987: xvi). They can also encompass cognitive processes “that people carry in their heads as mnemonic devices” (Woodward D. and G.M. Lewis, 1998: 3) or performances such as oral stories that participate in explaining and recounting relation to space. Drawing from this broad definition, this paper will focus on various forms of Lakota mapmaking as potential expressions of resistance to the settler colonial state (Wolfe P., 2006), but also as markers of the “survivance” (Vizenor G., 2008) or resurgence (Simpson L.B., 2011: 17) of Indigenous ways of being to the world. We argue, as Natchee Blu Barnd does when analyzing Indigenous geographies, that Indigenous narratives “can never be just a response to settler colonialism if they signal the continuation (however adaptive or appropriative) of precolonial epistemologies, ontologies, and practices” (2022: 5), meaning that because Lakota cartography pre-existed colonialism, it must be analyzed in terms of continued ontologies, and not exclusively in terms of reaction to settler colonialism.
2Maps can be seen as territorial narratives: “both big (and powerful) and small (less heard but nevertheless persistent) [that] order everyday life and relations to land” (Stiernström A. and S. Arora-Jonsson, 2022: 74). They embody choices made regarding the representation of space, depending on the information that needs to be passed on, who the audience is, whose memory and perception of places and events are put forward, and for what purpose. Noucher et al. (2021) point out the potential ambiguities of these mapping practices, as they often rely on dominant tools, but they contend that they still allow certain narratives to be made visible. As Ryan Eichberger, examining maps of the Sacred Stone Camp established to protest the building of a pipeline at Standing Rock explains, maps are rhetorical devices that imply choices such as inclusion and exclusion, which can potentially shape “possibilities of civic, national, historical, and spatial identities” (2019: 14). Just as maps have been used by colonizers to impose central sovereign entities through the erasure of Indigenous presence (Trouillet A., 2024), they can shape Indigenous senses of belonging and identity or help them resurface. They have also been used “for visually explaining and defending issues that arise from cultural use of territory, including land claims, natural resources, and sovereignty” (Pearce M. and R.P. Louis, 2008: 108).
3Our fieldwork, based on observations, interviews and archives, focuses on and around Rapid City, South Dakota (Fig. 1), a town that began in 1876 as a camp for gold diggers attracted to the Black Hills, built illegally along Rapid Creek, in the heart of the Great Sioux Reservation as established in 1868 (Baudry S. and C. Planchou, 2021: 52). Because of this problematic history, Lakota and other Indigenous geographic imaginaries have competed and still compete with settler colonial perceptions and representations of space. While David Bernstein cautions against “viewing the mapping of the American West as the outcome of a binary clash of cultures” (2016: 640), it is clear that most contemporary maps of the area are illustrations of the dispossession process, through forced settlement and the breaking down of the Great Sioux Reservation into six much smaller ones in the late 19th century. Rapid City itself, having been built in violation of the treaties signed by the US government, is particularly relevant as a space in which to study the manifestations of these territorial imaginaries. Public spaces display markers of both current and historical Indigenous presence (such as sculptures, graffiti, and tribal license plates). They also host artistic and research projects that use mapping and counter-mapping to convey historical perspectives on land dispossession and cultural relationships to territory.
Figure 1. Map of South Dakota, showing Rapid City and the nearby reservations
Sandrine Baudry, adapted from Open Street Map.
4Drawing on the work of historians, ethno-historians, and geographers, we will first examine the history of map-making in Lakota territory. Before colonization, varied tools and techniques served as descriptions and “inscriptions of the land” (Thomson C., 2022: 88), transmitting knowledge and relationships to places and natural resources even prior to contact with European settlers. The period of European exploration and colonization likely added new layers of complexity to Indigenous cartography, particularly by intensifying the rhetorical and representational choices highlighted by scholars such as Eichberger. While some maps were indeed produced to convey essential local knowledge to European newcomers, they also contributed to the delineation of colonial boundaries, thereby introducing a legal framework that could marginalize or erase Indigenous spatial narratives. This article will then contextualize contemporary Lakota mapping practices around Rapid City, studied in a second part through data collected in the field and online since 2015. We will examine current cartographic practices and their implications for Indigenous collective claims to territory and history.
5Describing ancient Lakota (and more broadly Indigenous) cartographic traditions is a complex task. As G. Malcolm Lewis explains, “even when ‘map’ is defined broadly (...), evidence for the existence of maps in [North American Indigenous] cultures is scattered, uneven, and plagued with problems of interpretation” (1998: 96). While a detailed discussion of the many issues of documentation and bias lies beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting that most maps were either destroyed over time or designed to be ephemeral from the outset (Hirt I., 2009; Lewis G. M.,1998). Another limitation stems from the “unwillingness or inability to recognize as maps certain types of archaeological evidence such as ceramics, textiles, petroglyphs, and pictographs, even when datable” (Woodward D. and G. M. Lewis, 1998: 2), or, until recently, performances such as oral stories. In spite of these challenges, and even if it remains difficult to “ascertain how long [a] tradition had been maintained (...) or how continuous it has been” (Woodward D. and G.M. Lewis, 1998: 2), conclusions can be drawn by acknowledging that cartographic traditions are historically fluid, and that “later documents may give us a window on earlier practices” (Lewis G.M., 1998: 52).
- 1 The Oceti Sakowin refers to a historical and ongoing alliance including the Lakotas, the Dakotas, a (...)
6Geographer Julie Rice-Collins argues that the oral tradition and the lifestyle of Plains Indians societies, which relied heavily on movement, strongly influenced ways of being within and knowing the surrounding landscape (2004: 40-41). She explains that they “required specific, accurate, and timely information regarding the spatial constructs of their world: locations of food sources, spiritual sites, seasonal camps, friends, and enemies. Their world was structured upon their knowledge and use of spatial information, and the ability to communicate and understand it ensured nothing less than their survival” (2004: 41). This was certainly the case for the Lakotas who, according to historian Pekka Hämäläinen, had become the most mobile of the Oceti Sakowin1 by the early sixteenth century (2019: 15). In this respect, rock art, petroglyphs, and pictographs could contain cartographic elements that conveyed spatial information and were used as navigational tools (Rice-Collins J., 2004). Cartographic inscriptions, whether permanent or temporary, functioned as anchoring cues in societies marked by constant movement: they described the landscape, provided information on resource locations, told returning hunting parties where the camp had moved, and made it possible to return annually to certain places.
- 2 According to Ronald Goodman, the Lakotas “felt a vivid relationship between the macrocosm, the star (...)
- 3 G. Malcolm Lewis mentions the existence of different Lakota maps made public when R. Goodman was do (...)
7Lakota traditional maps also served as spiritual guides expressing cosmological beliefs through, for instance, the practice of mirroring (Goodman R., 2017)2, that is, “correlating patterns of stars seen in the sky with spatial patterns of earth features” (Lewis G.M., 1998: 125). Furthermore, these interwoven spiritual meanings echoed into everyday life through the spatial arrangement of dwelling patterns. Maps could thus draw cosmograms that operated at different scales (Sundstrom L., 2021: 215). Few traces remain of such stellar maps, yet the practice of representing celestial features on hides has been documented among several Plains societies, including the Lakotas3. These sacred maps were, and still are, shrouded in secrecy. As noted by Lewis, their main goal was “to record cosmographic principles for succeeding generations,” and as such they were not meant to be shared with everyone and were long kept secret from Europeans (Lewis G.M., 1998: 125). The issue of public access also shows how transmission was tied to specific custodians who were responsible for preserving the artifacts and who knew how to interpret the cartographic symbols and translate them into stories.
- 4 See also James R. Walker, Lakota Myth (1983), p. 220-228 and 230-236 or Elaine A. Jahner, Lakota Ge (...)
- 5 See also Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends (1984), p. 390-92 or J (...)
8Indeed, Lakota navigational and spiritual pictorial traditions have always been embedded in a deeper network of cartographic techniques that necessarily involved oral tradition. As Rice-Collins further contends, these elements “were generally synopses of a much greater event or idea that could not be successfully or completely portrayed by solitary figures. In these cases, the figures served as mnemonic devices for prompting the oral narrative that was meant to accompany the symbol” (2004: 47). These oral narratives testified to “powerful memory and observational training” (2004: 44) acquired through the repetition of stories. It was precisely through that repetition that “past events and place names became part of the band’s collective memory” (2004: 45) and thus became defined as Lakota territory. In this respect, the Black Hills consistently appear as a central component of that territory. For example, Wind Cave is usually associated with the Lakota genesis story, according to which they descended from the Pte Oyate (Buffalo Nation) who came from the underworld and emerged onto the surface of the earth through this cavity (Albers P. et al., 2003: 540-2)4. In the same way, the Race Track is often depicted as a sacred enclosure surrounding the Black Hills, containing “all the tiers, directions, and/or elements of the universe,” and forming a sanctuary where warfare was not expected (Albers P. et al.: v)5. It is worth noting that an important point of entry into the Hills is located where Rapid City stands today.
9All these cartographic practices seem to point to relational, fluid, and situational territorial narratives. Indeed, they aim at transmitting knowledge and, in doing so, building relationships—both profane and sacred—with that territory and everything that is part of it. Pearce and Louis have described these practices as producing a “depth of place knowledge,” which is not “confined to the boundaries on land, but is inextricably intertwined with the spiritual realm” (2008: 114), thus encompassing both the cosmos and the underworld. In this way, traditional cartography reminds people of their “contractual responsibility to the land” (Lucchesi A.H., 2018: 3). Lakota land can thus be defined as a “realm of relationships and kinship” (Thomson C., 2022: 3).
- 6 Next to the Lakotas, other nations have retained historical, cultural and sometimes legal ties with (...)
10Fluidity is also an important component of Lakota map narratives, which can be tied to lifestyles in which movement is expected. Maps then participate in orienting movement. As Rice-Collins points out, for the Lakotas, “direction was not a principle derived from coordinates of latitude and longitude, but a spiritual, dynamic form of cosmological orientation” (2004: 46). Fluidity also pertains to the fact that different nations can produce and enact narratives that engage with the same territory, as P. Albers et al. have shown regarding the Black Hills6. It is clear, though, that the group that creates the narrative always recounts place from its own perspective, thus becoming the center of the map. In this way, Lakota traditional cartographic practices were situational. As Lakota historian Claire Thomson puts it, these practices “were both highly subjective and depended on people’s own stories and perspectives of landscapes as they experienced these places” (2022: 91).
11In keeping with fluid cartographic practices, the person who tells a map narrative can, for instance, choose from many words and expressions for the same location. Personal experience thus positions the “I,” and by extension the nation the “I” belongs to, as the point of perspective of maps—the “center on which one stands” (Lewis G.M., 1998: 53). It should be noted here that the term “nation” was certainly not an internal reality before it became a category imposed by Euro-Americans (Havard G. and R. DeMallie, 2019: 24-25). It is difficult to establish the social groupings with which this “I” identified before colonial interactions. Several concentric and constantly changing kinship circles overlapped, from the extended family to larger groupings like the Oglala, then the Lakotas, and, finally, the Oceti Sakowin (Hämäläinen, 2019: 16).
12The importance of perspective does not prevent the existence of “elastic boundaries” (Grillot: 51) and the overlapping of varied tribal narratives relating to the same area, which fits with Lewis’s argument that Native Americans have not “used maps to divide their territorial world into finite areas comparable to Europeans’ states, townships, and properties” (1984: 182). This is not to say that power dynamics were absent over land or that territorial claims were not conflictual. Rather, it means that these dynamics were not expressed through maps, which “have never been the expressions of secular power and were not to be until well after contact” (1984: 182).
13By the end of the 18th century, the Lakotas were well established in the Plains region, between the Missouri, the Platte, and the Powder Rivers. As interactions developed with Euro-Americans, they were increasingly solicited to provide geographical information, which was often conveyed in map form (Lewis G.M., 1984: 92). Although in that period inscriptions on paper were often produced by non-Indigenous cartographers, with the help of interpreters, Indigenous informants were still part of the process, making choices regarding what knowledge they shared and how they shared it.
14Interactions surrounding treaty negotiations are very valuable sources for studying the Lakotas’ perspective on land during that period. By the 1840s, tensions had arisen as more and more settlers followed the Oregon and California trails. As they crossed the Plains, they disrupted ecosystems by dispersing buffalo herds, grazing cattle, and using scarce wood resources (Havard G. and R. DeMallie, 2019: 27), thus modifying tribal circulations and reinforcing intertribal warfare, which in turn hindered settlers’ westward movement. The United States therefore sent a commission to “call together the Plains Indians to sign a treaty designed to impose a new order by establishing a general peace and drawing clear-cut boundaries between ‘national territories’” (2019: 28). Asked to “designate such rivers, mountains, and lines as will show what country each nation claims and where they are located” (2019: 29), most Lakota leaders replied that fixing boundaries did not imply restraining their movement and that they still had the right to use lands to which they were accustomed beyond these limits, especially for hunting purposes. For example, Walking White Buffalo responded by listing places (hills, rivers, etc.) he had “traveled over,” while Little Bear explained that all the Lakotas shared a territory that was given to them by Wakháŋ Tháŋka through “the gift of the sacred pipe, symbolizing the covenant between the Lakotas and the buffalo” (2019: 32). In the mid-19th century, the oral cartographies produced during treaty negotiations traced a territory still defined by the resources it offered—especially the buffalo—by experience, and by the relations, both terrestrial and spiritual, one had with it.
- 7 Namely Pine Ridge Reservation, Rosebud Reservation, Cheyenne River Reservation, Standing Rock Reser (...)
15Yet, the imposition of fixed boundaries and the federal assimilationist policies that accompanied the establishment of reservations modified the Lakotas’ ways of relating to, knowing about, and transmitting practices concerning the surrounding landscape. This was all the more significant since the newly fixed boundaries continued to shrink, further separating them from their traditional nomadic routes in space and time. In 1868, the second Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed, creating the Great Sioux Reservation. In 1877, after the U.S. Congress had unilaterally ended its treaty policy, and following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, an agreement took the sacred hills away from the Great Sioux Reservation. Amputation continued when, in 1889, following the Dawes Act, the reservation was fragmented into six smaller ones7, while private ownership of land was introduced through allotment. As individuals were confined within these “colonial containers” (Thomson C., 2022: 1), they had to adapt to new lifestyles which “disrupt[ed] Indigenous relationships between mobility and cartography” (Eichberger R., 2019: 12).
16Federal assimilationist policies reinforced this disconnection. First, education policies promoted ways of organizing and producing knowledge about time and space that rendered oral tradition less relevant. Similarly, the allotment of reservations fragmented families and hindered land-use practices based on extended family socialization, while limiting occasions for storytelling. Further, the Lakotas became disconnected from their land resources, especially the buffalo, both physically and spiritually. The planned decimation of the animal by the federal government made treaty hunting rights null and void in the eyes of U.S. officials, but it also unsettled the covenant between the Lakotas and the buffalo.
17As power interactions became more imbalanced on the ground, the American hegemonic cartographic discourse spread among the Lakotas. In particular, the idea of clear-cut boundaries demarcating lands to the exclusion of other peoples began to be adopted. As Havard and DeMallie have shown, some leaders during treaty negotiations started to produce such discourses and, in doing so, to “support power with maps” (2019: 26). Likewise, the designation of a “Sioux” reservation, although constantly shrinking, silenced the relations that other Indigenous groups shared with the same space. Indeed, “Euro-American maps sometimes solidified Indigenous claims to land that had been gained and lost in intertribal conflict” (Bernstein D., 2016: 639).
18Yet, adapting to and beginning to use imposed colonial land concepts may also be interpreted as contesting and resisting a new order. If reservations are indeed “colonial containers,” they also reflect a different legal order which, depending on the period, has been either interpreted as a source of U.S. power over Indigenous nations and their members, or as a source of Indigenous collective rights that predate the United States (Wilkins D. and K. Tsianina Lomawaima, 2001). Reservations thus appear as the territorial imprint of federal Indian law and of the special legal and political status of Indigenous peoples in the United States. Producing territorial narratives that recognize the existence of these clear-cut boundaries can therefore contest colonial patterns of erasure. Ethnohistorian Thomas Biolsi has shown that these legal narratives, which added a new layer of meaning to land by attaching specific rights to it, were emerging among the Sicangu in the first decades of the 20th century, when the Rosebud Reservation was opened to white settlement (2001).
- 8 Ledger art developed in the 1870s among the Plains cultures as an adaptive artistic movement. As hi (...)
- 9 Amos Bad Heart Bull was born in 1869 on the Great Sioux Reservation. In the early 1890s he started (...)
- 10 A reproduction of the map can be found page 204 of Sundstrom’s article.
19As new representations of the land emerged, adding a legal layer to Lakota space, Lakota people also continued to make maps and adapted to drawing their stories on new materials, although very few maps are actually known to the public. As Lucchesi explains, Indigenous cartographers were well aware that the information they transmitted through maps could be used against them and thus “learned how to hide ancestral knowledge from plain sight” (2018 3). Two maps representing the Black Hills as a sacred sanctuary and a map produced in the context of the Black Hills Claim in 1934 (Lazarus E., 1999: 159) seem to illustrate an evolving layering of Lakota territory. The former shows that the Black Hills have not ceased to be considered part of the Lakota spiritual world. The latter, on the other hand, indicates that the hills had also come to be construed as lying within treaty land. The first map, showing the Black Hills as sacred, is representative of ledger art8 and was made by Amos Bad Heart Bull (Oglala) sometime between the early 1890s and 19139. The second is anonymous and probably dates from 1946 (Sundstrom L., 2021)10. They both represent the Black Hills as an enclosed space surrounded by the Race Track and rely on pictographic tradition to inscribe important landmarks, thus “encod[ing] complex sets of information” which require interpretation (2021: 203). Further, they both express an earlier tradition of “privileging cosmography structure over topography,” which renders some information inaccurate by Western cartographic standards. These two examples testify to enduring mapping practices, illustrating how, for Lakota cartographers, “maps have turned into intellectual weapons for their descendants” (Lucchesi A., 2018: 3).
20Many projects could be highlighted here, but we choose to present a few that showcase the range of practices and discourses seeking to define contemporary Lakota space, whether in relation to collective and individual history or to everyday modes of inhabiting. For instance, spatial markers of Lakota presence, such as signs at the entrance of today’s reservations, contribute to mapping the territory. These signs proclaim to visitors as well as to inhabitants that they are entering Indigenous land and welcome them in both English and Lakota, for example: “to the Rosebud Indian Reservation” and “the land of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate.” Some also underline the relationship between place and sovereignty by displaying the tribe’s flag and colors, or, as in Figure 2, by highlighting tribal law specific to the territory being entered.
Figure 2. Sign at the entrance of Pine Ridge Reservation
Céline Planchou (2008).
21On the one hand, these signs seem to validate the boundaries of Lakota territory as “colonial containers” defined by the Great Sioux Agreement of 1889. On the other hand, they also imply that all land within those boundaries is Indigenous land, despite the checkerboarding mentioned earlier. In either case, a claim to territorial sovereignty is made through these official markers and is accompanied by specific actions—for instance, when the Oglala Lakota closed the borders of the Pine Ridge Reservation during the COVID crisis (Lakota Times, 2020).
- 11 Interview conducted by Sandrine Baudry and Céline Planchou, February 20, 2025.
22But these physical markers are not the only way in which the Lakotas reclaim land as well as political and territorial autonomy; they also rely on Western cartographic language (Hirt I., 2009: 171). As Oglala Lakota designer Craig Howe points out, knowing the status of land is fundamental to supporting tribal sovereignty11. Mapping is a necessary tool for spreading knowledge about the current and historical status of land and for reclaiming ownership. For example, Village Earth has been mapping every plot on the Pine Ridge Reservation, defining the purpose of the resulting book as “mak[ing] information about reservation lands more accessible to members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe to promote greater grassroots awareness and participation in land-use planning and management of their natural resources” (Village Earth), clearly highlighting the relationship between mapping and sovereignty.
23Despite the imposition of fixed boundaries in the 19th century and the shift in the relationship to Lakota territory that ensued, territory today is still defined by practices both within and beyond the reservation. Thus, “mobility sovereignty,” defined as “the ability to choose when, where, how, and for what purposes to engage in movement,” is also key to understanding the contemporary relationship to territory “that accord[s] with widely shared—if also highly distinct, localized, and diverse—Indigenous understandings of place, more-than-human relations, and mutual responsibility” (Carpio C. et al., 2022: 5-6). This mobility has historically been, in turn, constrained, controlled, and imposed. First, the Lakotas were forced to live in reservations; during the 20th century, those going to Rapid City were issued certificates of non-residency (Jansen D., 1962), annihilating any possible sense of belonging in the city. As for those who did live there more or less permanently, they were forced to move to neighborhoods beyond the city limits. Thus, Lakota mobility sovereignty, at different temporal scales, reaffirms the territorial coherence of the six Lakota reservations and re-places Rapid City at their center, beyond the purely functional relationship of any city with its periphery, as it provides jobs, housing, and services.
24The “traveling seminars” organized by the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies (CAIRNS), based in Martin, South Dakota, highlight this role of mobility in reconnecting with the territory. The concept for the seminars is defined on their website as “grow[ing] from the premise that peoples, histories and environments are inextricably linked in a complex symbiotic relationship that can be studied intellectually and experientially. The geographic focus of these seminars is the traditional homelands of the Oceti Šakówiŋ Confederacy, often referred to as the Seven Council Fires.” As such, these seminars represent an example of “process mapping,” a concept developed by geographer Robert A. Rundstrom and defined by Pearce and Louis as a way “to differentiate Indigenous cartographies from Western cartographies. Process cartography is an incorporative practice as opposed to an inscriptive one, which places emphasis on the process rather than on the artifacts that result from the process. Process cartography connects oral, written, performative, and experiential modes of mapping as a means to transmit situated Indigenous cultural knowledge from one generation to the next” (2008: 110).
25It is important to note that these seminars evolve over time to reflect not only traditional or historical territorial narratives but also current ones, and that they now include Wind Cave as well as the COVID checkpoints (Pearce M. and R.P. Louis, 2008). Ryan Eichberger’s analysis of various mapping practices in the context of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline shows how physical maps matter in defining identity and a relationship to place, but the struggle also included process cartography in the activists’ decision to move the heart of the protest camp in order to reclaim the territorial sovereignty guaranteed by the treaties (Planchou C., 2018). Indeed, originally established within the confines of the Standing Rock Reservation, the camp was deliberately moved outside the reservation, onto Lakota land as defined by the treaties of 1851 and 1868. Furthermore, the fact that the camp included schools centered around Lakota teachings also aligns with the generational transmission inherent in Indigenous cartography and with what Claire Thomson called “the cultural and social tying of Lakota people closely to place through lived experiences on the land and through shared stories” (2022: 88).
26Focusing on mapping within the city limits of Rapid City is particularly enlightening, not only because it was built illegally on treaty land, but also because of the perceived antagonism between indigeneity and urbanity, which has been widely documented and refuted over the last decades (Dorries H. et al., 2019; Blansett K. et al., 2022). We argue that contemporary mapping practices add to this body of work, as they bring to light both Indigenous presence in the city and the long-lasting effects of dispossession—of land, culture, and sovereignty. The few examples presented here, identified during our fieldwork and interviews as well as online, are intended to provide keys for analyzing the interconnections between mapping, collective memory, and spatial practices, and the ways they enable Indigenous people to stake claims to this now urbanized land from which they have been physically and symbolically displaced.
27First, there are strong visual markers of Indigenous presence in the city. For example, murals found downtown in Art Alley or in an underpass leading to North Rapid, a neighborhood associated with Indigenous communities, assert this presence throughout the city (Figs. 3 and 4). More formally, the First Nations Sculpture Garden, showcasing the busts of four prominent citizens of Oceti Sakowin, highlights Indigenous contributions to the arts, medicine, and philosophy in the region. The choice of the site for this garden sparked a conflict between Dakota writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and the City Council, which brought to the fore two different spatial and historical perceptions of the city. The City Council advocated for a more central location, better suited for tourists. Cook-Lynn, however, was adamant that the garden be placed in Halley Park, the original location of the Sioux Indian Museum. As “the only such monument located…within the boundaries of the peace treaty signed by the United States and the Great Sioux Nation in 1868 […] the location of the project is central to its message” (First Nations Sculpture Garden, quoted in Valandra, E.C., 2017). This location underscores the legal layers of Lakota territory in the city and serves as a reminder of ongoing Lakota presence there. In her response to the Department of Parks and Recreation, Cook-Lynn further explains the significance of the site regarding Lakota territory:
There is considerable Indian history embedded in the grounds now called Halley Park. What follows is only some of it. Prior to 1934, hundreds of Sioux families lived in what would be called Rapid City and Pennington County. They were a people who had been at war with the US for 30 years, signing several peace treaties. They lived in the western part of the emerging city in what was called ‘the gap’ along the Minnilusaha (Rapid Creek) as displaced peoples after the Indian War period. At that time, much of the land that would become the city was held in ‘trust’ by the Federal Government. […] The park now called Halley Park was included in those ‘trust’ status lands, as were many other parcels. The Department of the Interior built the stone building that sits on the property, and it was a gathering place. There was a Department of the Interior sign on the edge of the property, and it housed a Sioux Museum for decades (Cook-Lynn E., 2012).
28Similarly, the “Remembering the Children” memorial is planned on the grounds of the former Rapid City Indian School (also part of the trust lands mentioned above) to commemorate the deaths of children at that site. While controversial for the choice of a non-Indigenous artist to create the centerpiece of the memorial, the project can be seen as a form of process cartography and a reminder of continued, though constrained, Lakota presence in Rapid City. Indeed, the building first served as a residential school for children from nearby reservations, and later as a sanatorium for Lakota tuberculosis patients. The project began with research that produced Western-style mapping of the former Indian School lands, denouncing the illegal dispossession that occurred when the trust land was sold to churches and businesses, displacing Lakota families to the outskirts of the city. As the idea of the memorial developed, however, it began to incorporate oral histories, and the final project will include cultural and spiritual elements, thus serving as a gathering place (Remembering the Children). It is worth noting that the project has been supported by the tribal councils of the Cheyenne River, Oglala Sioux, and Rosebud Sioux Tribes, all of which signed a Memorandum stating, among other things, that “Rapid City is located within [their] original treaty territory.”
Figure 3. Example of graffiti in Art Alley affirming Lakota presence
Sandrine Baudry, 2016.
Figure 4: Mural marking the entrance into North Rapid
Sandrine Baudry, 2017.
29Besides these forms of mapping through spatial practices and markers, many contemporary artists incorporate cartographic elements into their work, whether through the representation of landscapes, by showing Lakota people in “unexpected places” (Deloria P.J, 2004), or through the direct use of maps. For instance, Oglala Lakota artist Keith Braveheart’s painting Kolas (Friends) depicts four young Lakota men sitting on war ponies and holding feathered spears in front of Prairie Market, a grocery store that no longer exists but which used to be “grand central station for North Rapid Indians” (Anunkasan Hupa)12. This painting re-situates Lakota presence in Rapid City, both traditionally, as represented by the war ponies, and contemporarily, as it illustrates today’s Lakota spatial practices.
- 13 Building on the notoriety of Mount Rushmore, Rapid City business owners have financed the making of (...)
30Another Oglala Lakota artist, Joe Pulliam, takes a more direct approach to mapping. Inspired by ledger art, he paints over different kinds of materials, including road maps. By painting dancing women, singers, or buffalo over these maps, Pulliam places collective territorial memories on these colonized spaces. The use of circles in his work aims to deconstruct the grid imposed across the country as the standard mode of land management and measurement. By re-placing this layer of Indigenous territorial narrative over colonial maps, the artist illustrates Barnd’s idea that “Indigenous geographies […] have been submerged, but not eliminated” (Barnd N.B, 2017: 1). Significantly, his Tusweca Gallery, which showcases his work and that of other Lakota artists, is located on Rapid City’s Main Street, in a building that once housed a bank that profited from the exploitation of gold in the Black Hills, and later the information center for the “City of Presidents” walking tour13. Pulliam is fully aware of this history, which lends significant power to his gallery and which he shares with visitors, along with information regarding art spaces in reservations—thus once again reconnecting Rapid City to the broader traditional and treaty Lakota territory. In this case, discourse itself can be understood as a form of mapping and a way to ensure the continuity and transmission of Indigenous notions of territory.
31In this paper, we used the example of Lakota territory to analyze Indigenous mapping practices past and present, both as a reaction to colonial control and dispossession, and as a way to provide narratives of relationships to the land and its resources. These practices are multiple and complex in both form and intent. If Village Earth’s project of mapping the Pine Ridge Reservation is intended to strengthen claims to sovereignty, maps have also been produced by the Oglala Sioux tribal government to bolster the economy, for instance with a tourist map developed by the Office of Economic Development. Mapping is neither inherently colonial nor anti-colonial. Likewise, using the technological tools or cartographic language of the colonizers can be seen as a failure to represent specifically Indigenous relationships to territory, but such tools can also be used to illustrate situated cultural knowledge while still being accessible to a broader audience. The Hawaiian example analyzed by Margaret Pearce and Renee Pualani Louis shows how the use of GIS technology makes it possible to add both a sense of time and a point of view to the mapping of the island, elements absent from colonial maps. In South Dakota, Oglala cartographer Jhon Goes in Center uses high-tech satellite images of the sacred Black Hills and superimposes the red Race Track, crucial in Lakota cosmogony. By looking at these mapping practices, one can glimpse the complex traditional and contemporary relationships between Indigenous peoples and their territories.