HOME | DD

Description
Another possible future map, this time for part of my native continent. There's a lot of discussion now about how it is "stolen land" and the indigenous people are still here and still being dispossessed by the settler-colonial system, for instance with oil pipelines being built through their lands without their consent. It's theoretically possible to just grant them sovereignty over their original lands, but I think that won't look the way a lot of people imagine it will. The direct inspiration for this project — which will be the first in a set of at least two, possibly three, exploring this scenario over time — is an ongoing US Supreme Court case currently called Sharp v. Murphy, which was written up in some on-line publications last year because it could potentially restore a surprisingly large amount of land to some of the more powerful indigenous groups here.

I was originally going to include Canada and some of Mexico, but that proved too difficult for two reasons: I couldn't line up the base maps correctly because they all, infuriatingly, used slightly different projections; and it turned out the histories of the Canadian and Mexican governments' relations with the indigenous peoples there are very different from the US, and the systems by which they legally designate these territories don't line up well with the US system. You may also notice that this map doesn't include Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska has yet another system which is totally different from both the US and Canada, and in this future scenario I would expect that the Hawaiian sovereignty movement has succeeded and they are once again an independent country.

The rump state left from the USA in this future is basically the original Thirteen Colonies, with the Proclamation Line of 1763 forming most of their western border. In spite of its territory shrinking, this entity sees an influx of people from the former states to the west, either because they don't want to live there under new governments or because they think they will no longer be welcome there. Such major changes require an economic realignment and, in effect, a total governmental overhaul. The Statesiders realize they no longer have any need or use for separate states in this situation, and the federal model is replaced with a unitary one. But they keep the name "Statesider" because the rest of North and South America absolutely refuse to call them "Americans" any longer. Meanwhile, East Texas turns out to be devoid of either legally recognized indigenous lands, or people willing to surrender their "Texan" identity for any reason. So the Republic of Texas is revived, but in a form that can actually stand on its own this time.

California was too hard to separate into distinct groups, and I got lazy. I admit it freely. I was tired. But also, when I was researching, it turned out that a lot of the original tribal divisions are lost in the murky depths of time, and a lot of false and garbled information has been absorbed into the general body of knowledge so that in some cases it's not clear who is who or what is what. There are rival groups with absurdly similar names , accusations and counter-accusations that this or that authority is an impostor. Land grabs, power grabs, and dubious claims abound. Oh, and there's also another separate system of designating indigenous lands.

The next installment will attempt to explore what the same scenario looks like after a couple of decades of adjustment, some power flexes by certain groups, and ongoing language restoration.

Description
Another possible future map, this time for part of my native continent. There's a lot of discussion now about how it is "stolen land" and the indigenous people are still here and still being dispossessed by the settler-colonial system, for instance with oil pipelines being built through their lands without their consent. It's theoretically possible to just grant them sovereignty over their original lands, but I think that won't look the way a lot of people imagine it will. The direct inspiration for this project — which will be the first in a set of at least two, possibly three, exploring this scenario over time — is an ongoing US Supreme Court case currently called Sharp v. Murphy, which was written up in some on-line publications last year because it could potentially restore a surprisingly large amount of land to some of the more powerful indigenous groups here.

I was originally going to include Canada and some of Mexico, but that proved too difficult for two reasons: I couldn't line up the base maps correctly because they all, infuriatingly, used slightly different projections; and it turned out the histories of the Canadian and Mexican governments' relations with the indigenous peoples there are very different from the US, and the systems by which they legally designate these territories don't line up well with the US system. You may also notice that this map doesn't include Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska has yet another system which is totally different from both the US and Canada, and in this future scenario I would expect that the Hawaiian sovereignty movement has succeeded and they are once again an independent country.

The rump state left from the USA in this future is basically the original Thirteen Colonies, with the Proclamation Line of 1763 forming most of their western border. In spite of its territory shrinking, this entity sees an influx of people from the former states to the west, either because they don't want to live there under new governments or because they think they will no longer be welcome there. Such major changes require an economic realignment and, in effect, a total governmental overhaul. The Statesiders realize they no longer have any need or use for separate states in this situation, and the federal model is replaced with a unitary one. But they keep the name "Statesider" because the rest of North and South America absolutely refuse to call them "Americans" any longer. Meanwhile, East Texas turns out to be devoid of either legally recognized indigenous lands, or people willing to surrender their "Texan" identity for any reason. So the Republic of Texas is revived, but in a form that can actually stand on its own this time.

California was too hard to separate into distinct groups, and I got lazy. I admit it freely. I was tired. But also, when I was researching, it turned out that a lot of the original tribal divisions are lost in the murky depths of time, and a lot of false and garbled information has been absorbed into the general body of knowledge so that in some cases it's not clear who is who or what is what. There are rival groups with absurdly similar names , accusations and counter-accusations that this or that authority is an impostor. Land grabs, power grabs, and dubious claims abound. Oh, and there's also another separate system of designating indigenous lands.

The next installment will attempt to explore what the same scenario looks like after a couple of decades of adjustment, some power flexes by certain groups, and ongoing language restoration.