Native Americans and GIS

image from esri.com

Tribal GIS is a book from ESRI, the company that produces ArcGIS, a GIS software package. GIS is a way of managing spatial information, and this book contains examples of how Native Americans (in the United States and Canada) are using GIS to make decisions about their land. Although GIS can be difficult to learn, more and more information is being analyzed in this way, enabling people to see patterns in how resources and people are located. Much of the most useful information that can be analyzed in this way exists only in the memories of people who have accumulated knowledge about the places they have lived and the paths they have traveled.