Rudo Kemper

Historically, maps played an instrumental role in the colonization of Indigenous peoples, by visualizing their lands as terra nullius to be carved up by the Western regimes, or by providing vital information about settlements to their colonial militaries. In more recent times, Indigenous peoples have taken advantage of this power of cartography by creating their own maps, a means to counter Western narratives of “empty lands”, to reclaim their land rights or resist encroaching extractivism, or to safeguard their traditional knowledge.

These initiatives, known as Indigenous mapping, have frequently been done in a participatory manner, with the lands being mapped collectively with multiple community members contributing their knowledge, and using new technologies such as GPS and smartphone applications. However, for many Indigenous peoples with limited experience working such technologies, the success of the project has been dependent on outside support from NGOs, activists, or academics.

The Earth Defenders Toolkit is a new collaborative space for local communities and their allies with the mission of promoting approaches to using technology in a way that supports local autonomy and ownership over tools and data, and reduces this reliance on outside support. These visuals are from case studies on the Earth Defenders Toolkit, which tell the story of how three communities successfully took action to map and monitor their lands using technology.

Rudo Kemper is a human geographer with a background in archives and digital storytelling, and a lifelong technology tinkerer. For the past decade he has worked in solidarity with Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in the Amazon to map their ancestral lands and document their traditional knowledge and oral histories. He is passionate about co-creating and applying technology to support marginalized communities in defending their right to self-determination and representation, and being in control of telling their own stories. Rudo currently works with Digital Democracy, where he is accompanying local communities across the globe in defending their lands, and stewarding the development of the Earth Defenders Toolkit, a new collaborative space for earth defender communities and their allies. He also serves on the executive boards of Native Land Digital and the International Society for Participatory Mapping, and is one of the core stewards of the open-source geostorytelling application Terrastories. Rudo is originally from Curaçao but is currently based in Springfield, Virginia.