Maps are essential to how historical narratives are told. Traditional cartographic conventions either erase the territorial holdings of Indigenous nations or superimpose the boundaries of modern American states over the historical maps, making the presence of the United States seem like an inevitability. This series of eight anticolonial maps seeks to complicate discussion around the history of the illegal seizure of Indigenous lands and make the timescale of Indigenous land loss easier to conceptualize.

Jennings Mergenthal, Macalester College ’21, created this series of maps which range from 1776 through 2019, illustrating where the Anishinaabe, Dakota and Ho-Chunk peoples lived and when they lived there. The maps visually depict how Indigenous peoples were forced to cede millions of acres of land, leading to the forced displacement of their communities. Jennings’s maps are works of art which are also intended to encourage a way of looking at history, of recognizing the connections between the past and the present, revealing “an ongoing arc of the present that is a continuation of the same beliefs, policies and legacies” established in the past.

Jennings created these maps for Macalester’s International Roundtable last fall, and the East Side Freedom Library is excited to host their presentation of these maps, by video, on our Facebook and YouTube pages. Jennings has generously donated a set of their maps to ESFL, so that, once in-person programming becomes possible, you can come in and look at them more closely.

Click “Going” and share on Facebook!