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`Indigenous people don't have boundaries': reborderings, fire management, and productions of authenticities in indigenous landscapes

University of Texas at Austin, bjornsletto{at}mail.utexas.edu

Participatory mapping has allowed indigenous groups to produce and to varying degrees distribute counter-representations of indigenous landscapes, including boundaries that delineate `their' lands from those of the state and other indigenous groups. Through counter-mapping, indigenous groups thus continue to produce boundaries that are, in many ways, products of historical struggles and tensions within indigenous communities, and which also attempt to reconfigure relations with a plethora of state agencies and other external actors. Thus such cartographic representations must be understood as contested, formalized representations that to varying degrees reflect (re)constructions of boundaries that assume different symbolic meanings in different social and historical contexts. Similarly, the power of state boundaries is contingent on fractures in state power, including contestations and conflicts of interest between and within state agencies. As in the case of the Gran Sabana, Venezuela, more invisible boundaries often have greater potential to perpetuate state influence in indigenous landscapes. This paper draws on the literature in postmodern geopolitics and Gramscian perspectives on state power to grapple with the social production of boundaries and relations of power in indigenous landscapes, and to critique the traditional binary posited between state (hegemonic) and indigenous (`counter') maps.

Key Words: fire management • Gramsci • Gran Sabana • indigenous mapping • Venezuela

Cultural Geographies, Vol. 16, No. 2, 253-277 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1474474008101519


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