National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Photo: Tribes Effectively Barred From Making High-Tech Maps


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Indigenous groups in the Philippines work on a 3-D terrain model of Mount Malindang highlighting their territorial claims. With help from activists, tribes in the Southeast Asian country have been using high-tech geographic information systems to build models like this, which could help them win land rights.

But as more tribes successfully argue their cases, a political backlash is setting in, activists say. Laws have already been amended in the Philippines and Malaysia that effectively make such tribal mapmaking illegal.

Photograph © Giacomo Rambaldi