Mapeo is part of the Earth Defenders Toolkit. Key features:
- Offline-first community mapping (designed for areas without connectivity)
- GPS points and photo documentation
- Built specifically for mapping ancestral lands
- Reportedly easy and fun to use (per Randall’s field testing)
- Terrastories is another tool in the same toolkit ecosystem
Discussion Context
ASD shared this on 12 Jun 2026 .
- Use case: 12 forest-associated Adivasi communities in Karnataka (Aranya Aadhaarita Budakattu, Soliga, and others). Could the state Adivasi collective use Mapeo to map and claim ancestral lands?
- FRA claims: The Forest Rights Act claim process requires documented evidence. Mapeo’s GPS points and photos could directly support individual (IFR) and community (CFR) claims.
- Parallel in India: ATREE recently relaunched their Aamcho CFR Mapping App - mobile-based GPS tracking for CFR mapping with real-time boundary plotting. They have facilitated CFR titles in Bastar. So the model is viable and already working in India.
- Funding question: Could we organise funding for the state Adivasi collective to do mapping and claiming work? Could this push the Adivasi land rights movement into the digital space?
Kaanu Integration Possibilities
Kaanu already serves as an interpretive and archival platform for South Indian Adivasi studies. Key overlap points:
- Community portraits: Mapeo’s GPS + photo data could feed into Kaanu’s curated community portraits and exhibits, adding spatial and visual documentation to existing narrative and bibliographic layers.
- Archival workflow: ingesting mapped data as records. Mapeo exports could become Omeka S items? with Dublin Core metadata (location coordinates as
kaanu:identifieror custom spatial fields? - Publications: Kaanu already hosts Adivasi land rights publications (e.g., Forest Conservation Amendment Act & Adivasi land rights 2025, Kerala Adivasi land claims & the welfare state 2025). Mapeo mapping outputs could become linked exhibits or supplementary material for these?