My blog entry this week entails a look at maps and the American identity. There are a number of cultural markers that make us 'American' such as Baseball or perhaps a cheeseburger some have even claimed that our attitude is unique among the worlds people. For me, to think about what it means to be American reminds me of something my grandfather who was full blooded Yaqui Indian said me once, “to be an American means to live in a land built on the backs of African slaves wading through the blood of its native peoples”. I don’t know where he heard it but it has always stuck with me. After a bit of research I discovered a couple of cool maps, the first is a map that depicts the Yaqui people and their native lands the other (figure 1.5) uses current Native American census information to create a map that relies heavily on Hue but remains effective. The over all design of this map is clean despite its many colors. Ideally, a professional cartographer would use between 3-7 different colors, any more then this often leads to confusion. Can we trust this map? According to this map native peoples are doing well as they seem to cover the entire map, obviously a map like this has great potential to lie. Perhaps not on purpose but all the same, how statistical information is represented can easily be manipulated and a map such as this is a prime example of information that seems a bit skewed. I have created a link to this site, organized by the Census Scope, for those of you who would like a more in-depth look.
Figure 1.5
Figure 1.5
