[Imports] Preliminary Import/Organized Mapping Effort Idea

Paul Johnson baloo at ursamundi.org
Sat Dec 21 00:27:01 UTC 2019


Content warning: Aboriginal abuse mention

On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 2:08 PM Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us>
wrote:

> I do have Washington State tribal lands available [1]  as a background
> layer for JOSM. There is also a vector tile layer [2] of the same
> background available for iD users.
>
> The data contains the name in english and the land type of Disputed Area,
> Off-Reservation Trust Land, Reservation, and Tribal Headquarters. Only 4
> disputed areas but 60 Off-Reservation areas. Some people include
> Off-Reservation in tribal lands while others do not. My sense is that they
> should be tagged as boundary=aboriginal_lands. I'd like to hear the opinion
> of the group.
>

The TLDR: I, personally, have not been including trust lands in Oklahoma,
for pragmatic reasons.  The situation is complicated, painful to many, and
politically loaded on a level where I don't think OSM should sort out trust
lands yet.

I'm aware of several dozen trust exclaves, but they all fall into one of
three categories.

   1. The exclave is presently unclaimed or claimed but no longer occupied
   by multiple tribes, and thus the status is ambiguous other than it's within
   BIA jurisdiction.  Most Oklahoma exclaves fall into this category, and it's
   really complicated.
   2. The exclave is claimed by one tribe but it's ability to establish a
   presence and primary jurisdiction is in question.  There's an exclave in
   Boise, OK where one of the tribes (not sure which, but pretty sure not
   mine) presently has plans to open a travel center and casino, however, this
   exclave is hundreds of kilometers from their jurisdictional area and
   whether or not they can even claim the exclave is nebulous.  It's
   effectively tribal terra nullius.
   3. The Chilocco Indian Residential School.  This one gets super touchy.
   The school, which closed in 1980, has sat abandoned and uncared for since,
   yet can't be torn down without considerable red tape since the site is on
   the National Historic Register.  The school is currently assigned to five
   additional tribes in the immediate region, and they cooperatively ran a
   rehabilitation center for the school's victims at the site in the 1990s and
   2000s, but the rehab facility has also sat abandoned since at least 2011
   with no plans for the site, and the whole enclave currently is off limits
   to everyone, very intermittently used as a training ground for federal
   police agencies, further rubbing sandpaper into unhealed wounds for many.
   No surprise, the original school that operated for 98 years is widely
   criticized for most of its existence, and especially in its final decade of
   operation, for being little more than a concentration camp for indian
   children as part of the US's plan for Americanization of indians. As far as
   I can tell, abuse at the school was institutionalized, frequent and
   persistent enough it's hard not to imagine it wasn't by design.  It might
   as well be scorched earth.

Add this into the fact that not all of Oklahoma's tribes (or even the
relevant tribes that potentially have claim to these parcels) get along
with each other.  Add that Governor Stitt has been talking about cancelling
state compacts with the tribes this month, and we're actually seeing nearly
unprecedented intertribal unity and cooperation right now (weird how a
common threat does that).

All that said, my read on the situation?  Trying to sort out the trust
lands in Oklahoma is politically shaky at best for OSM, and it wouldn't
surprise me if similar situations are present in other states.  Offhand,
Pennsylvania, Oregon and Kansas all have federal indian schools presently
in operation (Army War College in Carlisle, Chemawa in Salem, and Haskell
Indian College in Haskell respectively).  Washington State had one as well
(Fort Simcoe), and presently has a far darker and ongoing relations with
the tribes in that state most readily comparable Canada's Highway of Tears,
but more widespread.
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