Cherokee Riverkeepers
Data Visualisation: Cherokee Riverkeepers
Associated Project: Native Ecologies
Funder: British Academy
Partners: The Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield
People: Professor Gregory Smithers
Cherokee Riverkeepers is a data visualisation that showcases the work of Treatied Spaces British Academy Global Professor Gregory Smithers. It focuses on Cherokee language, naming practices and storytelling to centre waterscapes in Cherokee history.
Spanning 12,000 years of human history, the website uses an interactive map, story maps and historical and contemporary photography to asks some fundamental questions about Cherokee and environmental history.
How did/do mountain rivers and their tributaries begin life? What larger environmental roles do free-flowing streams play in mountain watersheds? How did language and storytelling help Cherokee people navigate and give meaning to landscapes and waterscapes? And how have Indigenous relationships with Southern Appalachia’s waterways changed over time?
Research Programmes
Connecting Cultures
A collaborative project revealing how historic sites can position themselves as global crossroads, enabling multiple global publics to connect their lived experience with them.
Diplomacy and Treaties
International collaboration revealing globally significant cultures of diplomacy between the Crown, the Haudenosaunee and their neighbours in North America.
Digital Storytelling
Digital resources that involve the public, advance research, energise teaching, and drive knowledge exchange, built in partnership with the UK’s foremost research software engineers.
Resource Use and Environmental Futures
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Political Ecologies
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Completed Projects
Timely interventions that examine the power relations between Indigenous actors and the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.