Course Length: 12 hours
Course Week: 8–10 July 2026
Format: online only
Fee: $900

This online RBS course explores Indigenous North American cartographies as a rich archive for critical bibliography. Focusing primarily on Indigenous American maps materially expressed through Western forms like the codex, this course introduces participants to the history of Indigenous North American cartographies from the earlier colonial periods through today. Maps are everywhere in Indigenous American books. There are the iconic endpaper maps of D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded (1936) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991). The cover of Ella Deloria’s Speaking of Indians (1944) abstractly maps the tiyospaye, or Dakota camp circle, and similarly abstract representations of land, cosmos, and kin—drawn by the author’s father—are found throughout N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), which is itself a map as narrative. And these are just examples of maps and books that resemble Western forms. Métis scholar Dylan A. T. Miner argues that “contemporary artistic analysis” insufficiently accounts for the formal radicalism of Indigenous cartographies, which can meld land, text, image, and body. Taking a holistic approach, geographer Margaret Wickens Pearce (enrolled Citizen Band Potawatomi) rejects map-like in favor of map to describe the multiplicity of practices—such as chant or sand painting—that can co-constitute Indigenous cartographies.  

The course will begin with an introduction to emblematic cartographic practices and maps. Next, the class will look at pre-1800 colonial books—e.g., travel narratives, printed and manuscript maps, deeds—to consider how these material texts are in relationship to Indigenous practices of mapmaking and placemaking. Then participants will turn to the nineteenth-century books to trace how Indigenous cartographies endured and evolved in the era of Industrial print and in response to the violences of settler colonial continental expansion. The class will then consider the presence of maps in Indigenous books from 1900 onward and how they illustrate ideas of ongoing sovereignty and presence. At conclusion, the class will include a workshop on mapping, inspired by the pedagogy of Margaret Wickens Pearce, and then a symposium, during which participants will present on one map or book. 

Two-Hour Sessions:
Session 1: Introduction to Indigenous American Cartographies
Session 2: Indigenous Cartographic Presences in Colonial Books to 1800
Session 3: Enduring and Evolving Indigenous Cartographies in the Nineteenth Century
Session 4: Illustrating Presence and Sovereignty in Modern and Contemporary Books
Session 5: Workshop on Mapping
Session 6: Symposium and Course Conclusions