UPDATE!!!
The Indigenous CO-PIs and Wendy Teeter have agreed to archive the project given the recent admission of Maylei Blackwell that she is not Cherokee and willfully did not follow up on family stories. Professor Blackwell primarily worked with the Latin American Indigenous Diaspora map. We regret any harm that came to the communities we have worked with over the years. Our Indigenous collaborators are an important part of this research and we tried to our best to keep their voices and wishes in the project mapping. The voices of community members are important in these maps, So for now we will keep the project up until we consult with our community collaborators about their wishes given Dr. Blackwell’s admission.

Prior to 9/1/2024
As faculty, many of us work on and with different Indigenous groups in the Americas. We often would talk and share stories over dinners, between meetings, and at events sharing our concerns about the erasure of indigenous peoples and their separation through different racialized or even geographical categories that often hide some of the similarities and even the productive differences between our communities. We understood as Indigenous peoples in Los Angeles how we connect and our lives and histories intersect, but wanted a platform to make those intersections legible to each other and to the public. When the Institute of American Cultures Dream Fund issued their call for proposals, we came together to generate the seed grant that allow us to fully envision this project. We learned about each other as well as new technologies and new histories from our various areas of expertise and we ran into many glitches along the way. We invited community members to collaborate in the design as we came to agreement about protocols, and through this process, members of the indigenous community of Los Angeles became community scholars and knowledge producers whose labor and talents are featured within this project. As the seed of our vision grew, so did our perspectives and we hope to continue to grow the map of Indigenous LA as we carry on into the future. We invite you to join us and contribute your own story here by contacting us at mappingindigenousla@gmail.com or by contacting a current co-pi of the project.