National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Photo: Tribes Effectively Barred From Making High-Tech Maps


Email to a Friend	<< Back to Full Story

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