Issue 12 - Alaska - Legend — Territory
▻http://themapisnot.com/issue-12-legend
It comes as no surprise that many maps of Alaska perpetuate that settler-colonial perspective: There is the totem pole in the lower right corner, the igloo in the top left, a lumbering bear in the middle, not too far from a gold mine. From this bird’s eye, the landscape is expansive yet traversable. There’s room for anyone, these maps suggest, which often means just the opposite. By what authority do they claim this? These maps do not acknowledge, of course, that the Aleut, Inupiat, Athabascan, Yuit, Tlingit, Haida, and other native peoples have stewarded the land depicted, throughout the violence and removal that such maps give rise to. That Alaska, despite its seeming inviolability as a political entity, is a recent state and a temporary one at that, one that hosts and is hosted by multiplicities of climates, ecologies, histories, languages, and peoples.