Participatory Indigenous Spatial Ontology

R. E. SieberC. C. Wellen

McGill University

GIS and Indigenous Peoples

• GIS used by indigenous communities throughout the world (Poole, 1995)

• Main Goals:– Land rights (Poole 1995, Cizek 2004)– Preserve knowledge of elders, hunters

(Tobias 2000, Laituri 2002)

• Criticisms:– Indigenous knowledge fit into machine, not

the other way around (Rundstrom,1995; Nieminen, 1998)

Cree villageCree village1,200 people1,200 people

Traditional land tenure systemTraditional land tenure system25% live off the land25% live off the land

Discovery Channel Canada http://www.exn.ca/NationalParks/ accessed March 02, 2006

Context

• Main research question: can a blend of participatory GIS and ontology address Rundstrom’s critique?

• Cree present an ideal context to investigate this:– They have money and access to information– They have infrastructure to support GIS already– They are implementing GIS of Cree oral history

Outline

• Introduce ontology in GIScience

• Introduce Participatory GIS

• Focused Research Questions

• Methodology

• Initial Results

• Future Plans

What are Ontologies?

• Philosophy: Study of being (Dale, 2002)

• Information Science: Explicit specification of a conceptualization (Gruber, 1993)

• GIScience: both! (Agarwal, 2005)

A Simple Ontology of Streams

Adapted from H. Pundt, Y. Bishr / Computers & Geosciences 28 (2002) 95–102

From cognitive to computational

• Cognitive work highlights cultural differences in ontologies (Mark and Turk 2003)

• Computational side focuses on Semantic Web type applications (Egenhofer 2002)

• Work is needed that bridges the gap

Hydrographic Features Across Ontologies Mark and Turk (2003)

PGIS

• What is it?• What benefits of using PGIS?

– Traditional ecological knowledge (instead of just expert knowledge)

• What drawbacks does it highlight?– Top down– Actors’ interests. For research, graduation, tenure, and

promotion. Because it’s ‘interesting.’ Because they can watch us and because it can improve individuals’ expertise (knowledge of GIS) and status in the community (culturally protected area versus mining; who gets hired once the protected area is established) and reinforce existing inequality and power structures (or undermine one element in the power structure) (Kyem 200x). Therefore, our project can have negative impacts.

Literature Review

Prelim Ontological Schema

Data Collection

GIS User Needs Assessment

Ontology Formalization

User Interviews – Ontology Development

Team meetings for System Design

Meta Data Collection

Ontology Verification

Iterative methodology for a participatory Ontology

Remote user interface design

System Specification

Content Analysis

Verify Ontology

Verify System

Deployment

GIS Application Development

Focused research questions

• What hydrographic feature categories do the Cree have? How can these features be represented in a GIS?

• How much must GIS technology be modified or customized to accommodate Cree hydrographic feature categories?

• How do we incorporate stories into a GIS?

Stuff to put• What hydrographic feature categories do the Cree have? How can these features be

represented in a GIS? – Components include geometric, attributional, relational.

• How much must GIS technology be modified or customized to accommodate Cree hydrographic feature categories?

– How much cartography? GIS? Incorporating a CMS.– Geometry. Points are problematic but are lines and areas good enough? Places are named

on the basis of how they look so it’s a finer grain of understanding. – A better semantic structure of explicit relationships is needed than in GIS or RDF (e.g.,

upuuchuun is where Poplar meets the James Bay. Perhaps a network model better than a geometric one)

– Topology. Networks need adjacent features. • How do we incorporate stories into an ontology? CMS? GIS? Interface?

– Conceptually, a 3D or multi-layered ontology (need example). This would essentially give each token its own schema.

– Computationally, make the story the entry point. Recycle stuff from AAG.– Specify a database schema for how stories relate to names, names to features. Should this

come first? This would be a simple ontology of how stories relate to places (are these features?). The problem is, this is not a very participatory method of doing so, nor would it be complete, as we plan to implement a folksonomy thing. I did talk to people about placenames and stories a little though.

Methods: Ontology elicitation• Adapted two-stage UK Ordinance Survey methodology (Mizen et al 2005) –

conceptual ontology and logical ontology.• Conceptual Ontology:

1. Create a list of “essential” terms of hydrography from Cree School Board dictionary

2. Worked on establishing trust3. Created GIS (for town work) and took paper maps (for canoeing)4. Participant observation:

-Canoe Trip-Subsistence activities (i.e. chopped wood, checked fishnets, cooked bannock)

5. Semi-Structured Interviews with hunters and elders involving GIS, list. Asked what words they use to describe landscape that don’t translate into English.

6. Double-checked spelling, meaning with Cree language expert.7. Found Cree literature on lake formations.

• Result: knowledge glossary in plain text and semantic triples

Picture of the list

shiipaashtikw side channel of a riveranatwaayach river wideningchishtaashtikw on the main part of a rivermischaakushtikw a small stream, river in a swamp

paaushtikuu rapids

paaushtikuushiish small rapids

siipii rivershiipiish creek, streamshikaapishii small creekshakaapishiish very small, bushy creek

Siipii –

river

Shiipaashtikw –

side channel

Anatwaayach – Between rapids

Shiipiish – creek, stream

Pimistaakan – well used water

travel routePaaushtikuu –

rapids

Kapataakan – portage

shikaapishii

minishtikuchuun

Siipii - ClassUtamaa – Beaver or otter crossing

Mischaakw – Muskeg, swamp

ConnectedToPartOf

ContainedByAvoids

Aamaataamapiich – empties out

SynonymOf

aamaataashtikwaayaach

Mischaakuhtin – The river goes through a muskeg

Pitu-Piashich – Pool below rapids

kipaanaanischii – Campsite

Piishipuyaakin – Fish weir

ConnectedToPartOf

LittleBrotherOfAvoidsAlsoNamed

InstanceOf

Paakumshumwaashtikw Siipii

Paakumshumwaastikw Pimistaakan Pimistaakan

Paakumshumwaashtikw - Instance

naatwaahkupaash aasaashkaachuuhch Paaushtikuu

naatwaahkupaash aawichuuhch kipaanaanischii

naatwaahkupaash aawichuuhch Paaushtikuu

anatwaayachnaatwaahkupaash aawichuuhch

naatwaahkupaau anatwaayach

niishushtikwaayaau aamaataashtikwaayaach

KapataakanPortage6

Portage5 Kapataakan

aatikwaatuwaayaach

Paakumshumwaashtikw - Instance

shiipiish

Anatwaayach

Paaushtikuu

Paaushtikuu

Kapataakan – portage

kipaanaanischii – Campsite

GIS Features

Search Engine

Place Pages

Cree Ontology Instance Semantics

Non-Spatial

ContentOther Content

Stories - folksonomies

• Oral history already recorded

• Refers to named places – can be incorporated into the GIS

• Other, more participatory methods of data indexing are required – folksonomies. <recycle some AAG if we have time.>

Our Results (in terms of GISoc and Ontology)

• Ontology is homogenous: assumes that terminology is standardized across a population – Forced communities in Wemindji—e.g., slightly different ways different families referred to a river

confluence. Whose words are privileged? (other words become a synonym of the privileged word)– Differences between coastal and inland peoples (different words for features existing in their spheres of

influence). • Are we creating a domain where one didn’t not previous exist? Is hydrography a domain or a part

of another domain (e.g., fire succession, beaver habitats)• Are we creating a superclass where it didn’t exist? There is no Cree word for waterway or

watercourse that came up.• Prevalence of the class versus the instance in Cree culture (and multiple inheritances). The bay

versus bays. Are we privileging categories over instances (e.g., placenames) and introducing English concepts into the language?

• PGIS assisted in conceptualization of ontology because ontology is a really abstract • Changing power relations and personal interests (actual examples or anticipations)• Did transformation, which can be viewed as bad. However, some transformation is viewed as

good (e.g., oral to written (Laituri 2002; Visitor 2006). Everyone is learning English• The issue of adjectives, nouns and verbs.• The issue of mereology and topology (the only topology is geographic).

Our Results in terms of PGIS

• Endogenously created? (The Band Office did say they wanted GIS. And CTA are using Google Earth to place cabins. One reason they’re doing this is because they don’t want to give it to the band office.) Involving whom and in what capacity?

• Computationally it’s difficult to implement with Cree partners. So is it really bottom-up (see ladders of participation) and at what stage is it participatory? And how participatory do they want it?

Put ladder of participation here