Indigenous Cartographies in the Covid-19 Pandemic

• Author(s): Sartoretto, Paola ; Martins, Luana
• Date: 2025
• Origin: Media and Communication
• Subject(s): Brazil; counter-mapping; Covid-19; data appropriation; Indigenous communication; resistant cartographies
• Document Type: Journal article
• Language: English

Description

For Indigenous populations in Brazil, maps have long been instruments of invisibility. Official maps have historically misnamed and erased Indigenous territories and communities. At the same time, cartographic representations have been a tool of resistance for Indigenous activists. Indigenous communities and organisations have created their own maps identifying territories, peoples, languages, and cultures. These dynamics of contentious visibility intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic when the spread of the virus among Indigenous populations was poorly reported or even absent from hegemonic contagion maps. State negligence, intensified by an authoritarian government hostile to Indigenous populations, threatened the survival of communities around the country who organised collectively to create their own cartographic representations of the pandemic through resistant appropriations of media and data. This article draws on interviews with Indigenous leaders and media activists to discuss processes of data appropriation and resistant cartographies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings highlight the use of data and counter mapping strategies for self-representation and political action that must be understood through a non-media-centric perspective, drawing from conceptualisations at the intersection between human geography, communication, and post-colonial theory.