COUSHATTA BASKET WEAVERS: MAPPING GIFT ECONOMY How not to lie with maps Denise Bates*, Arina Melkozernova** in collaboration with the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, USA *Professor, Faculty of Leadership and Integrative Studies, Arizona State University **PhD Candidate, Comparative Culture and Language, Arizona State University Keywords: Historical maps, TEK, tribal economy, Coushatta, access “True Indigenous formulations are non-intrusive and build frameworks of respectful coexistence by acknowledging the integrity and autonomy of the various constituent elements of the relationship.” Alfred Taiaiake (2005) Arizona State University (ASU), in partnership with the Coushatta Tribe Council, the Coushatta Heritage Department, archivists and community members, funded by the Stowe Endowment Fund, are collaborating on generating the geospatial data from various resources. The oral histories, archeological findings, and cultural items held in public and private collections contain data about the Coushatta ecological knowledge and land stewardship practices. Based on this data, we developed the map of basket weavers’ housing along Bayou Blue, ca. 1970s (Langley, Bates, 2021, 23). The map demonstrates the strong connection of the basket weavers’ homesteads to the swamps, rivers, and pinewoods where all basket materials were collected. The clusters of homesteads show the community density that help transfer information and knowledge to the next generations. The map intended to serve as a geo-argument to support the claim about the Coushatta basket weaving as a communal endeavor that provided the prominent contribution to a tribal economy. As the result, in 1972, the Coushatta tribe was recognized by the State of Louisiana and federally acknowledged. This poster documents the process of producing a historic map of the Coushatta basket weavers, circa 1970 from archival materials provided by the Coushatta Heritage Department. The locations of basket weavers in 1970 were translated into coordinates (longitude and latitude) by using free Google maps. By using Python programming in the Jupiter Notebook, the data were imported from Excel into a map viewer. Producing the map by using the freely accessible Google maps as a base posed challenges of interpreting the accurate results. For Coushattas, baskets are sacred “gifts emanating from the landscape” (Pete, 75). The reduction of geo information by the Google algorithm wiped out small rivers and creeks from the interactive map. As the result, the place-based connection between homesteads and watershed was lost and with it the references to Coushattas’ cultural values and identity. To restore the narrative of the Coushatta’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), the watershed layers were reinstated through adding rivers to the map base by using commercial software (StoryMaps, Adobe Cloud). In order to convey the deep connection to land, the equitable and eminent collaboration in a cross-cultural setting and access to technology are necessary to enable communities to contribute to their presence in a digital space. Both technology and the TEK are equally important for imagining alternative futures (Duarte & Belarde-Lewis, 2015).