Workshop of Map Production

During the development of the different Working Groups (WGs) of the research, there was a need and demand to produce maps to systematise and consolidate the data collected within each of them, as well as posters that circulated among the indigenous people and the schools in the different villages.

 

In parallel to this production, the Map Production Workshop emerged as an offshoot of the WG Systematisation of Monitoring Experiences and Counter-cartographies, which aimed, among other things, to present to the indigenous people the tools used in the research process, thus enabling their appropriation and even intervention in what was being produced. The workshop took place in three meetings during the month of May. It was led by an architect and doctoral student in architecture, a graduate student in architecture and urbanism, and supported by an extensionist, all from the UFMG-IFNMG/UFPA/Univ. of Sheffield research team. In the first meeting, as a result of a question from one of the indigenous participants, we discussed the meaning of the term counter-cartography, better situating the Workshop. We also introduced the Qgis software, presenting its interface and basic tools, using as a basis the data collected by the GT Educação e Saúde. In the second meeting, we continued to explore these data and their representation, generating a map with the number of hypertensive patients per pole of health. At the end, we printed this map digitally in order to communicate to the Xakriabá the possibility of creating material for internal or external discussion. In the third and last meeting, we discussed the posters that were being produced for the WG on Territory Management and Economy, expanding the concept of counter-cartography by detaching it from the map and emphasising its possibility of expression in different platforms, languages and realities. We explored the Adobe Illustrator software and www.canva.com as possible tools for indigenous use. At the same meeting, another researcher of the team, also an architect, presented platforms such as Google Earth and Mymaps, which would enable community mapping among the indigenous people.

 

In general terms, the three meetings made it possible to present, albeit in a preliminary way, the main tools used in the research for processing, in images, the data produced by the Xakriabá. The meetings also sought to fill the gap between data collection and its graphic expression, unveiling the means by which researchers process them and, ultimately, informing the possibility of indigenous peoples appropriating them.

 

Below, the map produced in the second meeting of the Workshop, using relevant data from the Work Group Education and Health (in Portuguese):