The only publicly available GIS data about indian lands is dated, and nearing useless. The problem arises from tribes that have a combination of “trust lands” which are INDEED sovereign nation lands, and the “fee lands” which are those lands that the tribes have purchased, or were given, and were not part of the original reservation. Within those “trust lands” some tribes keep NO records, and some keep meticulous records, but don’t share them with anyone. Making ownership/parcel data/platting information hard to come by. I’m not necessarily defending Google, i’m just saying the little bit of data that is out there sucks.

Credit where credit is due!
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/06/02/native-american-reservations-representation-and-online-maps/

So what can we do to change this? Who do we contact?

There are several takes on this from my point of view.

Generally speaking, when producing maps for public consumption (I used to work on road atlases), only trust lands are depicted on maps. Fee lands get a little bit dicey, and from the “Atlas” viewpoint, generally one shows areas of governmental administration.

Trust land data is generally available without too much trouble. Granted, it is often out of date or compiled at a poor scale, which means that it doesn’t line up with other data sets that well, but it does exist, and the mantra in private mapping is that bad data is better than no data.

Which leads us to Google. Unlike the other mainstream mapping companies (Bing, MapQuest, etc), Google uses their own in-house data. Most other companies use a provider such as Navteq as their base, resulting in essentially the same map used repeatedly using different symbology.

Google has compiled their own data, and, IMO, it reflects Google’s view of the world: advertising opportunities. While it is a great product and very useful in many different contexts, one must always understand what its purpose is before being too critical about its content.

In other words, when I produce a tourism map, I will show the museums and parks in a town, but I’ll most likely leave off the steel mill or nuclear power plant, even though these features are equally important to the daily life in the town. These are features that simply are not important to tourists or may even chase some of them away!

I would suggest contacting Google (if that is possible) and inform them the importance of including certain datasets (such as Indian Reservations). Unfortunately, they need to be convinced that its in their best interest to do so.

Too bad we don’t have an Indigenous map that shows our traditional land use and occupancy. My daughter, Metis Artist Christi Belcourt, did a project along those lines that I’d like to share. It can be found at http://www.christibelcourt.com/Gallery/gallerySERIESmrPage1.html