Washington, DC – Today, Friday, August 9th, Google Maps and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) will host their first ever Indigenous Mapping Day, a global “MapUp” intended to celebrate the United Nation's International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. The effort is a result of a partnership between the National Congress of American Indians and Google Maps, including Google Map Maker, Google Earth Outreach and the Google American Indian Network.

“Place is one of the most important values for Indigenous peoples – our place includes our sovereignty, our culture, our resources, and our ways of connecting with each other and other nations. This project is an exciting start to reclaiming and establishing our rightful place in the world. Our focus is to empower tribes and tribal citizens to actively participate in how tribal lands and communities are represented on Google Maps,” said Jacqueline Pata of NCAI, the oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native advocacy organization in the United States.

A MapUp is a group of people that come together to edit Google Maps with the Google Map Maker tool. By sharing their local knowledge and expertise, MapUp participants help to make Google Maps more comprehensive and useful for others, and can ensure the map accurately reflects their local community. NCAI hosted a MapUp at the 2013 Mid Year Conference, providing the NCAI Youth Commission with training on this important tool. NCAI has established a set of guidelines for Indigenous Mapping Day to ensure tribes make informed decisions about how their community is represented on Google Maps.

Many tribal communities in the United States lack accurate mapping information pertaining to roads, buildings, and information on services available to tribal members and the general public. Google Map Maker enables tribal governments, businesses, and individual citizens to take ownership of their communities as represented on Google Maps. This tool allows these entities to add to, edit, and improve digital local maps by mapping tribal offices, medical facilities, local roads, and everything in between! Anything from structures, landscapes, or ATM locations can be identified on Google Maps by using the Map Maker tool.