February 10, 2022

Entanglements: Mapping the History of Asian Migration onto Coast Salish Lands 

UW doctoral candidate Anna Nguyen is an Asian American historian who is passionate about documenting, preserving and sharing the histories of Asian Americans. Through the Simpson Center’s 2021 Mellon Summer Fellowship for Public Projects in the Humanities, Nguyen and fellow UW doctorate candidate Madison Heslop began their collaboration to create Entanglements: Mapping the History of Asian Migration onto Coast Salish Lands. 

Completed in January 2022, Entanglements is a digital counter-mapping project that charts the settler-colonial conditions of Asian migration onto Coast Salish lands by analyzing the intersections between Coast Salish and Asian American histories in Seattle and the central Puget Sound area. UW Libraries talked with Anna Nguyen about this fascinating new digital scholarship project, supported by UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons*. 

What is counter–mapping? Counter-mapping’ is the map-making process whereby communities appropriate the state’s techniques of formal mapping and make their own maps as alternatives to those used by government (Nancy Peluso, 1995). Counter-maps become tools in the broader strategy for advocacy as they articulate community claims for rights over land. In addition to representing geographic information, counter-maps negotiate between central social, cultural and historical notions. (Source: The New Media Lab)  Counter-maps can represent psychological as well as physical distances that are rarely linear or uniform. Mapping is eternally linked to stories, and counter-mapping acknowledges the use of more than one knowledge base. It also has the possibility to counter the naïve, sometimes malign, simplicity of state lines. Counter-mapping helps us to give more weight and representation to customs and claims on the land that have traditionally been ignored. (Source).

What was the goal of the project?

The goal of the map was to do place-based history by locating stories in their original landscapes where stories from Coast Salish and Asian American communities most deeply intersect. This goal required us to engage with geography, ecology, and the built environment as well as to develop a sense of historical place–the meanings that past and current residents have assigned to sites–in order to “read” the city as a historical text.

What do you want people to remember or learn through this map?

Entanglements seeks not only to answer the question of how Asian Americans have historically been implicated in furthering colonial logics, reinforcing settler-colonial structures, and justifying dispossession of Native lands in the United States; but also the question of how we might generate new pathways toward further solidarity between Asian American communities and Indigenous nations.

What inspired you to choose this topic?

As an Asian American historian I was interested in doing a counter-mapping project that emphasized the importance of land, labor, and resources in the history of Asian migration to the Puget Sound area, and the different ways that Asian Americans have been harmed by, implicated in, and/or resisted white settler colonialism in the region. I thought Madison was the perfect person to collaborate with on such a project as she is an expert on Pacific Northwest history and is well versed in the Indigenous history of the area. In addition, I knew that Madison had previously worked on similar counter-mapping projects like the amazing “A People’s Landscape: Racism and Resistance at UW.

Ultimately, for both of us this project was also a way to actively acknowledge the claim and stewardship of Coast Salish peoples–past and present–over the land. 

How did you create it?

We used Omeka and Neatline, platforms available through the UW Libraries.  The platforms were intimidating at first, but did not require specialized technical knowledge to use. Verletta Kern, the Digital Scholarship Librarian, helped us talk through our options in terms of mapping platforms that can be supported by UW Libraries, options for hosting, and how best to navigate permissions for reuse for some digital images from UW Libraries Special Collections.  

How do UW Libraries make digital scholarship projects like Entanglements possible? 

While we receive funding through fellowships and other programs, the Libraries provide personal instruction and training that is really important for researchers to do this type of digital scholarship work.  Before this project, I didn’t realize how much UW Libraries is committed to digital and public scholarship. The Open Scholarship Commons’* mission is closely aligned with our own philosophy on public digital history, so it seemed like a good place to start in terms of learning more about how the Libraries could support this work.  At the same time, the staff at the Libraries are also really open to listening to us about how best to support this work. I had some great discussions with the Research Commons Librarians Elliott Stevens and Senior Online Learning Support Manager Perry Yee on different ways to teach Omeka and Neatline to UW students. 

“While we receive funding through fellowships and other programs, the Libraries provide personal instruction and training that is really important for researchers to do this type of digital scholarship work.” 

How are you sharing this work, and what has been the response so far?

We worked with several local museums and archives to gather resources and feedback. They have been very supportive in sharing the project with their networks through social media. We hope that through stories like this and other forums that showcase digital scholarship at UW, more people will see the project and gain an understanding of our shared histories as they relate to place and our broader UW community. 

Anna Nguyen is graduating in spring 2023 and Madison will graduate spring 2022 with the completion of their doctorates in history. 

*What is the Open Scholarship Commons?

UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons (OSC), operating virtually for now, provides a hub for cross-disciplinary knowledge creation and dissemination– supporting you in using digital tools to openly share your research and safely integrating new digital pedagogy techniques into your classroom.   

We encourage you to explore OSC services and upcoming events on our website, including our OSC project page with many examples of how the OSC team is supporting open digital scholarship projects across UW. 

Learn more about the UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons

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