It is important to note that the project does not aim to collect or aggregate data but to support and sustain the existing practices of activists who care for femicide data in their own contexts.

9:50 - 10:05 AM || Q&A Session

10:05 - 10:15 AM || Break

10:15 - 10:50 AM || Topic:

Presenter: Dr. Christine Mallinson (virtual)

Chair: Phillip Carter

Title: Communicating ethics in the social sciences: Insights and models from linguistic research

10:50 - 11:05 AM || Q&A Session

11:05 - 11:15 am || Break

11:15 - 11: 50 AM || Topic: Community Geography

Presenter: Timothy Hawthorne (virtual)

Chair: Kevin Grove

Title: Community Geography and GIS in Belize with Community Members, Undergraduates, and K-12 Teachers

Community geographers have long been interested in ways in which participants from outside of the academic geography world can contribute their experiential knowledge of place into research and teaching practices. Through an NSF-funded undergraduate and K-12 teacher program, since 2016, the Citizen Science GIS team has worked with community members and leaders in Hopkins Village, Belize to document community knowledge related to flooding and disaster management. In this work students and teachers engage in drone mapping, interviews, and participatory sketch mapping with community members to address two key research questions: a) where have community members experienced flooding related to existing infrastructure and b) where have new flooding hotspots occurred, especially in relation to increased impervious surface runoff and increased development? To address these questions, students and teachers each summer engage in individual interviews and sketch mapping activities with 50-75 community members. Results from the interviews aggregated together show a collective understanding of flood experiences in the village from the perspectives of community members and help to provide pertinent spatial information to decision-makers to argue for additional community resources and mitigation strategies. The work provides a case study and set of methods for use by other scholars and practitioners around the globe who wish to integrate local knowledge through community geography, sketch mapping, and GIS. In this talk, I share an overview of the work along with a specific focus on ethics and teaching practices in a community-based research training program focused on undergraduates and K-12 teachers.

11:50 AM -12:05 PM || Q&A Session

12:05- 1:15 PM || Lunch Break

1:15- - 1:50 PM || Topic:

Presenters: Maui Hudson (virtual) and Dr. Riley Taitingfong (virtual)

Chair: Genevieve Reid

Title: CARE for Indigenous Data - Promoting ethical data practices and participatory data governance

1:50 PM - 2:05 PM || Q&A Session

2:05 - 2:15 PM || Break

2:15 - 2:50 PM || Topic:

Presenters: Matt Wilson (in person) and Emily Barrett (virtual)

Chair: Genevieve Reid

Title: Ethics and Expertise in Community Mapping

The work of mapmaking and geospatial data analysis provide an entry point for critical geographers, critical GISers, and radical cartographers to intervene in geovisual rhetorics that often reify and privilege the expertise of mapmakers. This leveraging of expertise requires deeper ethical considerations, as the power of a drawn line moves decision-makers and members of the public toward a finality that is often too neat, too tidy. In this presentation, we discuss our experiences being interpolated as experts in public debates on gentrification in Lexington, Kentucky. We discuss the resonances and responsibilities of community mapping at a moment when there are many maps, but fewer stories told through them.

2:50 - 3:05 PM:|| Q&A Session

3:05 - 3:15 PM || Break

3:15 - 4:15 PM || Panel (hybrid)

4:15 - 4:25 PM || Break

4:25 – 5:00 PM || Presentation of the 4 workshops for the next day + Wrap up.

Day 2 (January 19)

Location: MANGO Building - 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, FL 33199

Zoom: https://go.fiu.edu/ethicaldata2

9 AM- 2 PM: Four Breakout Workshop Sessions Presentation Format: 10-15 min presentation followed by 15-20 min discussion

3:00- 4:00 Round off (MANGO 221)

4:00-5:00 Next steps (MANGO 221)

Workshop 1 (MANGO 315): Critical education, social justice theories, intersectional feminist approaches, and ethics in the classroom

Chair: Dr. Aaron Kuntz

10:00-10:30 AM || Welcome and introductions

10:30- 11:00 AM || Mapping Ethical Lines of Inquiry: Relational Materialism, Extraction, & Procedurism

Presenter: Aaron Kuntz, Florida International University

In this presentation I situate conventional methodology as operating according to a logics of extraction, one that sidesteps material events and experiences in favor of representational accuracy and currency. I situate methodological concerns as inherently pedagogical and linked to larger assumptions regarding what we know and how we live. I ground these conceptualizations through examples in the field of educational research and, well, food. I end by outlining the potential invoked by relational methodologies as articulated through qualitative inquiry.

11:00-11:15 AM || Break

11:15 - 11:45 AM || Situating Data for Drinking Water Justice

Presenters: Eric Nost, University of Guelph; Kelsey Breseman, Environmental Data and Governance Initiative; Marianne Sullivan, William Paterson University of New Jersey; Lillian Luisa Milanes, William Paterson University of New Jersey; Nicole Davi, Columbia University; and Environmental Data and Governance Initiative

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) releases a wide variety of data on the enforcement of and compliance with environmental protection laws. This data is highly relevant to environmental justice (EJ) analyses and programs like Justice 40. However, EPA’s data is neither complete nor well-contextualized, limiting how the public might respond to environmental inequities and raising data justice questions such as whether it is fair for some communities to have better information than others about how state and industry manage their environment. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) hosts copies of EPA’s datasets to “situate” and experiment with them towards just ends. EDGI collaborated with New Jersey-based researchers to co-produce a teaching tool that pairs EPA’s data with local datasets to engage undergraduate students in learning about drinking water justice in the state. We reflect on our collaboration, including conversations that led us to pivot from EDGI’s data science notebooks to a user-friendly website. While the website maps an abundance of localized and statewide data on drinking water issues, it also questions the provenance, completeness, and authoritativeness of its sources. We discuss opportunities for self-reflexivity like this in interactive map-based teaching tools. In particular, we highlight trade-offs between data science notebooks that overwhelm students but afford deeper exploration of data governance issues, and more engaging tools that lend themselves to other ways of questioning the data. We invite conversation on best practices for prompting students to situate data infrastructures while using them to learn about EJ.

11:45 AM -12:15 PM || A Textured & Interdisciplinary Pedagogy

Presenter: Roberto German, Multicultural Classroom , and Lorena German, Multicultural Classroom

Considering the pedagogies enacted all across the world, a shift in stance is required to respond to human development as well as social movements. A non-responsive curriculum and its corresponding instruction are no longer viable. In this session, participants will explore a nuanced and cohesive approach to teaching that is critical, interdisciplinary, focusing on social justice in the classroom, all while developing skills for our evolving society. Considering the nation's continued shifting demographics and developing complex social issues, schools are behind in preparing students to humanely engage in such a society and contribute meaningfully through problem solving. The praxis needed today includes how you teach your subject matter, how you design learning experiences, and how you relate with learners. Attendees will gain access to a framework developed for immediate implementation, addressing the national tensions in education, including sample work and ideas for discussion. Resources shared in this session, including Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, will offer practical and research-based answers for addressing the needed changes.

12:15 -1:15 PM || Lunch break

1:15 -1:45 PM || Relationally Accountable Instructing: Practicing a Two-Eyed Seeing Approach

Presenter: Brad Hanson, NMSU

For three years (Fall 2020 – Spring 2023) I served as the instructor of record for an introductory geography course called World Regional Geography. This work was connected to a graduate worker assistantship and my PhD studies into Indigenous knowledge and ways of being. Semester to semester I worked to tangibly implement aspects of my learning by changing how I served as the instructor of record. My learnings were many, but they can be distilled down into me working to become more relationally accountable; to students, to the topics we studied, and to the communities we lived within. A key change I made was replacing the standard textbook with a guidebook. It was my hope that through using this guidebook, the geographic topics would be offered in a way that was culturally appropriate and approachable for everyone. It is my hope that this guidebook might inform your own instructing. As I have been maturing as an instructor, both within and outside of academia, it strikes me how my priorities have shifted. I used to focus on the “whats” of my instruction (i.e., geography concepts, paddling techniques, writing skills, skiing mechanics, etc.) more than the “hows” (i.e., being a co-learner, creating/maintaining space for everyone to share their thoughts, etc.). I am still figuring out exactly how to instruct in relationally accountable ways. I hope from this guidebook you might pick up some tangible ways that you can instruct with more relational accountability :-)

1:45 - 2:15 PM || Indigenous Data Sovereignty in Local Cultural Resource Management, Miami-Dade County

Presenter: Jennifer Tisthammer, Florida International University

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) as a term is unique to the United States but similar to heritage management globally. CRM can be generally defined as “cultural heritage management within a framework of federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and guidelines” and includes those parts of any environment – landscapes, historic sites, archaeological sites, material culture, et al as well as the data and intellectual resources derived from CRM activities – that have meaning or are important to a people or people as a collective (Messenger and Smith 2010). The over-arching goal of CRM is to design and carry out scientific studies under applicable preservation and environmental laws, to conserve cultural resources through avoidance of destruction, and to recover and preserve information through data recovery when destruction is unavoidable. In the era of Big Data, vast amounts of information are collected, stored, interpreted, and shared, often including sensitive details about individuals and groups. Centering key themes and approaches of an Indigenous Data Sovereignty framework, my research dissects and analyzes the previously unchallenged use and acceptance of institutionalized research processes and practices, at the local level (State of Florida and Miami-Dade County), that have been conducted to steward cultural resources at the Deering Estate – a state-owned and Miami-Dade County managed historic site. For feedback and discussion are co-produced frameworks, models, and pathways toward research, data management, and cultural resource practices inclusive of Indigenous researchers, research methods, values, and cultural norms.

2:15-2:45 PM || Critical Community-Engaged Pedagogy in an Introductory GIS course

Presenter: Federica Bono, Christopher Newport University

In Spring 2024, I am converting my Introductory GIS course into a Community-Engaged Learning course. Informed by a community-engaged pedagogy that centers social justice, students and the instructor work with, not for, community partners to solve a geospatial question while developing crucial GIS skills. Specifically, students will not only learn to understand the structure of a geospatial environment, gain useful software skills, and learn how to work with spatial data. They will also reflect on the role GIS can play in the community, their role as a GIS analyst and how GIS can empower or disempower community partners. Throughout the semester, students, the majority of whom has no previous geospatial or mapping knowledge, will work with two organizations to find suitable locations for new homeless shelters in Hampton and Newport News, VA, find a new suitable location for the local SPCA, and work with the Newport News Fire Department to find new suitable locations for fire stations and analyze their potential impact in the community. This contribution will share the syllabus with built-in flexibility and a new balance between content-learning and community-engaged learning, reflection prompts as well as other tips and tricks based on the ongoing course. Ultimately, the goal of the contribution will be to answer the question of how we can teach critically informed, ethical, community engaged GIS.

2:45-3:00 PM || Break

Workshops 2 (MANGO 370): Community and citizen-engaged approaches to knowledge production: The Case study of Miami

Chair: Dr. Kevin Grove

9:00- 9:30 AM || Welcome and introductions

9:30-10:00 AM || Using Mechanism-Based Case Studies for Theory Development Through Counter-Narrative Integration: Illustrations from Community Efforts to Resist Displacement

Presenters: Aarti Mehta-Kroll, Florida International University; Derrick Boakye Boadu, Florida International University; and Alexander Kroll, Florida International University

Across disciplines, scholars are increasingly concerned with the validity and representativity of administrative, geospatial, and big data when used in research. Such data often carry biases and are likely to underrepresent the views of residents in marginalized or disadvantaged communities. While previous work has made recommendations on how to improve collecting, reporting, and analyzing specific types of data, this paper focuses on the sensemaking process around data use for research projects. It proposes the use of mechanism-based case studies (MBCS) as a holistic, integrative – although mostly under-utilized – approach to research that can incorporate counter-narratives and triangulate data sources for the purpose of theory development and illustration.

MBCS treat communities (or specific episodes within the case) as the unit of analysis and employ narratives to describe developments over time. The narrative construction is open to the use of all relevant types of data, including community input via oral histories and photo voice applications. MBCS are particularly useful if the interest is in understanding causal steps in relational processes in which groups of people interact with each other (Barzelay, 2007; Kroll, 2023; Tilly, 2001).

The paper will explain how MBCS can be used to integrate alternative sources of data and involve counter-narratives. It will also illustrate how to use mechanisms to develop theory drawing on community research in Miami, especially Little Haiti and Coconut Grove. It will showcase how mechanisms can be employed to explain how community groups resist displacement and use shared leadership practices to coordinate among themselves.

10:00-10:30 AM || The Power of Art as a Tool of Resilience

Presenters: Rebecca Friedman, Florida International University; Marcie Washington, Florida International University; and Carl Philippe Juste, Iris PhotoCollective/Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance Commons for Justice:

10:30-10:45 AM || Break

10:45- 11:15 AM || Little Bahamas of Coconut Grove: Past, Present, Future

Presenters: Rebecca Friedman, Florida International University; Valerie L. Patterson, Florida International University; Gray Read, Florida International University; and Aarti Mehta-Kroll, Florida International University

This project /paper seeks to capture the intergenerational traditions and folkways of the Bahamian diaspora of South Florida. Building on existing oral histories, we seek to discuss the placemaking practices of this community at a time when social ties and cultural connections are becoming dispersed and displaced. One of the avenues we would like to explore is the Goombay Festival in the Grove, which brings together a once tight-knit community that is fighting to preserve their connection to the land of their ancestors. Linking narratives about the past to stories and images from the present, we will explore the challenges and opportunities of cultural preservation in face of intensifying gentrification and displacement.

Coconut Grove was first settled in the 1800s by a group of white and Bahamian pioneers who lived, worked, and prayed together till the area was incorporated by the City of Miami in 1925. At that point, the strictures of Jim Crow segregation were imposed leading to racial spatialization that is visible to this day. For decades the Bahamian, and later African American community of Coconut Grove contended with civic disinvestment that forced many to live amidst squalor. Collective organizing by an interracial group of Black and white community leaders led to improvements in living conditions starting in the late 1940s. Since then, community capacities in the form of homeowner’s associations, church alliances and university community partnerships, have repeatedly been activated to fight to preserve this tight knit community and the area’s unique architectural heritage.

As this struggle continues, the proposed panel/paper seeks to highlight the long history of activism in this community while examining the connection among segregation, territorial stigmatization, and gentrification.

11:15- 11:45 AM || Community Knowledge Production: A Case Study

Presenters: Francesca Escoto, Allapattah Collaborative CDC; and Loreen Magariño, Florida International University

Learn how one neighborhood organization is using community-produced data as a tool for place-making, economic resilience and historic preservation. Data formats include narrated stories, surveys, video, pictures, and sounds. We will explore the power of data to create experiences that maximize geography, built environment, history, and a local community's self-determination.

11:45 AM -12:15 PM || Lincoln-Fields, Liberty City: Tenants Confronting Extractive and Retaliating Landlord-Management

Presenters: Sedrika Jacques, Tenant-Lincoln Fields, Liberty City

The challenges of organizing tenants in a large HUD apartment complex against extractive and retaliatory landlord-management.

12:15 -1:15 PM || Lunch break

1:15 - 1:45 PM || Mapping the Everyday Struggles and Precarities of Informal Domestic Workers in Miami

Presenter: David A. Ortiz, Florida International University

Domestic workers occupy unmapped spaces hidden within the underground economy of the informal sector. Without the protections typically offered by formal sector jobs these workers, predominantly women, experience some of the harshest working conditions including exposure to toxic chemicals, wage theft, physical abuse, and sexual harassment. Despite the significant presence of informal labor in global cities such as New York and Miami little is known regarding the socio-spatial contexts of informal domestic worker’s experiences. Through a feminist geography approach this study makes use of a sub sample from the Giving Voice to Greater Miami’s Communities of Color survey to map the everyday struggles and lived experiences of domestic workers in Miami and contextualize these struggles to already existing challenges in the region including housing, transportation, healthcare, and climate change.

1:45 - 2:15 PM || Confronting gentrification: The politico-spatial economy of Little Haiti households

Presenter: Richard Tardanico, Florida International University

Greater Miami is a racialized and ecologically calamitous outcome of collisions between Global North and South, past and present. Pushing against that polarized and precarious macroscape are its predominantly Black and Brown worker communities of diverse ethno-national identities, whose livelihood struggles confront a rapacious real-estate speculative political economy. Little Haiti stands in the crosshairs of that political economy, as anchored by the City of Miami’s approval of the special area plan for the Magic City Innovation District (which despite its tech-hype is a residential-entertainment venture for middle and upper-middle consumers) and the similarly marketed Citadel food hall (which brazenly misappropriates the name of Haiti’s monument to the revolutionary establishment of the Western world’s first independent Black nation). The political and acutely emotional rift among Little Haiti’s activist stakeholders over Magic City’s special area plan has since yielded to reproachment and unified activism in matters such as immigrant/refugee rights and peace and security in Haiti. Yet collective action for and against real estate speculation has largely dissolved into individualized responses to accelerating gentrification’s opportunities and threats: efforts to advance economically, to forestall dislocations, or even to become less precarious. Such actions can be construed as pragmatically hopeful or defensive responses to gain or protect barebones rights to the city given the speculative uncertainties of a Black immigrant-hub community beset by painful personal and collective histories as well as continuing struggles. My proposed community-engaged research will address the politico-spatial economy of 40-50 working-poor households in Little Haiti as they confront the real-estate speculative gentrification of Little Haiti. The research will be conducted in collaboration with Little Haiti’s Konscious Kontractors.

2:15 - 2:45 PM || Designing value: An informational political ecology of restoration ecology 

Presenters: Kevin Grove, Florida International University; and Melissa Bernardo, Florida International University

Over the past decade, interdisciplinary research on environmental management has increasingly turned to mixed qualitative and quantitative calculatory techniques to determine economic, cultural, social, and political values of nature. This interest in diverse valuations of nature is, for proponents, enabling environmental governance to better account for competing interests, address longstanding inequalities, and thus allow sustainability and resilience initiatives to help advance justice agendas. Through a case study of Florida Everglades restoration, this paper situates the calculation and functional integration of diverse valuation of nature within the wider context of emergent visions and practices of an informationalized, cybernetic “third nature.” Following decades of struggle over the pace and scale of restoration, the integration of diverse calculations of nature’s value into Everglades science and restoration governance is increasingly aligning restoration and urban development trajectories. However, far from ameliorating conflict, this analysis shows how the informationalization of nature is rendering previously opaque political dynamics transparent, and thus undermining the potential for interdisciplinary science to contest ongoing environmental destruction. 

2:45 -3:00 PM || Break

Workshop 3 (MANGO 434): Interdisciplinary and community-engaged approaches to rewiring geospatial technologies and data visualizations

Chairs: Dr. Phillip Carter and Dr. Diana Ter-Ghazaryan

9:30-10:00 AM || Welcome and introductions

10:00 -10:30 AM || Mapping colonial archives as counter-practice

Presenter: Lea Denieul Pinsky, Concordia University

10:30-11:00 AM || The Hidden Layers: Unraveling Socio-Technological Practices and Community Dynamics in Collaborative Map Creation

Presenter: Levente Juhasz, Florida International University

In the realm of volunteered geographic information (VGI) projects, individuals and user communities are pivotal. Our study, still in progress, delves into the collaborative map production process, emphasizing not just the data volume and quality but the social dimensions underlying this process. We argue that understanding collaborative spatial production requires a broader lens, extending beyond spatial data to encompass socio-technological dynamics and ethical considerations. Utilizing OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a case study, we explore self-organizing mapping communities, focusing on their activities in online collaborative tools like mailing lists, forums and wikis. Our investigation seeks to uncover how these interactions translate to map editing patterns and the broader implications for geospatial data volume, availability and validity. This research contributes to the critical discussion on collaborative practices in geospatial data science. Its significance lies in its potential to illuminate the often-overlooked aspects of VGI projects. By understanding the broader social and technological dynamics at play, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of collaborative knowledge production in the digital age. It highlights the need for innovative practices in the ways we think about geospatial data, particularly understanding the collaborative process through its social dimensions. This, in turn, will improve the validity and fairness of geospatial data created through these processes.

11:00- 11:15 AM || Break

11:15 - 11:45 AM || Open Data Promises and Perils for the Public Good: Lessons from the 2020 United States Electoral Districting Cycle

Presenters: Jim E. Thatcher, Oregon State University; Alexis Wood, University of California - Berkeley; and Evangeline McGlynn, Harvard University

The 2020 electoral redistricting cycle in the United States saw significant public interest in both the process and outcomes. Communities of Interest (COI) emerged as a key battleground for political and social actors due to their simultaneously nebulous and varied definitions as well as their protected status within the majority of states. To help local organizations and communities gain recognition within the districting process, online tools like Representable and Districtr emerged - offering end-users the ability to interactively draw communities on a map, qualitatively describe what features of the area would qualify it as a COI, and promising to contribute said map into larger state and national processes of districting. In this article, we demonstrate how these purportedly neutral and open tools function as black boxed digital intermediaries between citizens and related governmental bodies during the districting process. Through a series of vignettes, we illustrate how definitions of ‘open’ and ‘public’ are always necessarily imbricated with questions of for whom and of what. The significant role these tools have come to play within state and local districting efforts emphasizes the material impacts that can emerge within unregulated ‘open’ data and technology practices. While we demonstrate how these concerns can hold true throughout broader practices of ‘open’ technologies, we conclude the paper with a series of targeted suggested best practices in third-party data collection to ensure equitable communication between government bodies and the citizenry.

11:45 AM - 12:15 PM || Violence, another challenge for the just energy transition. The Case of Autonomous Energy Communities in Colombia

Presenter: Thais Escobar-Sanabria, Florida International University

The growing body of research at the nexus of political ecology and energy-related inquiries has significantly advanced our comprehension of power dynamics, knowledge production, and the distribution of risks and benefits. This intellectual progress contributes profoundly to a nuanced understanding of energy challenges, guiding endeavors towards more equitable and sustainable energy futures. However, prevailing analyses often overlook crucial variables such as violence in regions, departments, and municipalities aspiring to achieve a just energy transition. This study examines a new Colombian government program launched in 2023, establishing autonomous energy communities, with 610 participating communities registered until November 15, 2023. Using official municipal data from the Colombian Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Energy and Mines, this study explores the impact of violence on these energy communities and assess spatial correlations between their locations and serious crimes between 2021 y 2022. Findings indicate a critical need for policymakers and stakeholders to address violence as a pivotal variable risking the consolidation of energy transition for these communities in Colombia. These insights contribute to the ongoing debate on equity, community participation, and the management of natural and energy resources within the framework of a just energy transition, particularly from the context of the global south.

12:15 - 1:15 PM || Lunch break

1:15 - 1:45 PM || Fixed Solutions: Thinking Beyond Static Decision Criteria to Promote Adaptive River Management

Presenters: Frank Schmitz, Florida State University; Tyler McCreary, Florida State University; and Steve Leitman, Florida State University Apalachicola Bay Systems Initiative

In this paper, we explore the interactions that occur as the fluid nature of rivers, riverine science, and societal relationships to rivers converge with the fixed decision criteria underpinning present-day water governance. Our focus is the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Water Control Manual for the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River. Developing three case studies, our paper investigates the historic production and legacy of decision criteria for managing dams in the ACF. We argue that many of the decision criteria guiding management in the ACF today were born from now antiquated concerns and matters of convenience, rather than the current best available data or considerations for changing socio-ecological conditions. Included in this focus on fixed decision criteria is a fixation on utilizing historical climate to forecast future management approaches. We argue outdated decision criteria in the ACF remain a component of current management due to the convenience of fixed solutions in environmental governance as well as the bureaucratic complexities and arduous processes the Corps must navigate to update their projects. The basin has changed significantly since the ACF dam building era (1950-1980), yet ACF management approaches remain locked in time. We call for a more adaptive and collaborative approach for generating management strategies that are aligned with current ecological knowledge and community needs.

1:45 - 2:15 PM || Mapping Police Use of Force Policies and Incidents: Data Collection Issues in the Sunshine State

Presenters: Adam Rose, Florida State University; Tyler McCreary, Florida State University; Miltonette Craig, Sam Houston State University; and April Jackson, University of Illinois at Chicago

In this paper, we describe how struggles with data access and transparency have impacted a project to map police use of force in Florida. In the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, there was a broad public discussion around police use of force. The FBI had created a National Use-of-Force database to provide greater public transparency around policing, and Florida legislative reforms in 2021 required all police jurisdictions in the state to report incidents of use of force. Simultaneously, Campaign Zero, a police reform advocacy group, has championed eight changes to police use of force policies under the moniker “8 Can’t Wait.” Over the past three years, we have sought to collect information on police use of force policies and incidents to examine how policy reform could address incidents of police brutality. However, our analysis has been consistently mired in the muck of systemic data issues. In spite of the legislative requirement for public data transparency around police use of force, police authorities continued to act in ways that undermined data accessibility. They limited the available data and provided it in forms that inhibited statistical analysis. In this paper, we describe how the structures of police data management and distribution continue to constrain possibilities for critical interpretation of police practices. Thus, we highlight the difficulties of using police data to demonstrate police injustice. We also discuss how forms of citizen science and participatory action research can produce forms of information to challenge the lack of police transparency and demand more fundamental change.

2:15 - 2:45 PM ||Title TBD

Presenters: Phillip Carter, Florida International University and Diana Ter-Ghazaryan, University of Southern California

2:45 - 3:00 PM || Break

Workshops 4 (MANGO 470): Indigenous geospatial data sovereignty, Indigenous methodologies, and Indigenous pedagogies

Chair: Dr. Genevieve Reid

9:30 - 10:00 Welcome and introductions

10:00 - 10:30 AM || Towards a Pedagogy of Decolonizing Places in Postcolonial West Africa

Presenter: Raymond K. Awadzi, Florida International University

10:30 - 10:45 AM || Break

10:45 - 11:15 AM || Digital placemaking among urban Indigenous in Brazil: Reaffirming identities through social media

Presenter: Ana T. Casasanta Skaarup, Florida International University

My proposed research explores the intersection of digital placemaking and Indigenous identity among Brazilian urban Indigenous communities through social media. While there has been growing academic interest in the positive outcomes of digital connections, there is a need to understand their potential negative consequences in more depth. To address this gap in the literature and add to the existing conversation, I propose to: first, investigate how urban Indigenous communities use digital placemaking to promote intergenerational knowledge transmission to overcome the geographical distance from their ancestral lands; second, examine how multi-ethnic Indigenous communities balance the adoption of a common language in the digital realm while preserving their distinct identities; and third, assess the strategies employed by these communities to confront and counteract essentialized notions of indigeneity when engaging in non-traditional communication methods.

I will conduct a nationwide media analysis and a digital ethnography focusing on Belo Horizonte, Brazil's fourth-largest urban center. I will draw on Placemaking Theory, the Theory of Becoming, and the Politics of Recognition as lenses to help answer my questions. While my study is still in its proposal stage, I hope to uncover fresh findings that can contribute to the broader conversation surrounding Indigenous digital presence and cultural resilience in today's world.

11:15 - 11:45 AM ||Transboundary Governance and Conservation of Amazonian Freshwaters

Presenter: Stephannie Fernandes, Florida International University

The Amazon Basin, with its extensive network of free-flowing rivers, harbors unparalleled biodiversity and provides crucial ecosystem services to humanity. Migratory fish species, essential to both ecological and social systems, face imminent threats such as overexploitation, illicit fishing, deforestation, and hydropower dam construction. In the “Triple Frontier” transboundary region of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, where migratory fish catch is substantial, country-specific governance efforts operate through community-based management, which struggles to address the social and ecological vulnerabilities of frontier cities. Still in the proposal stage, I expect that this research will highlight sound possibilities for unified management policies, monitoring systems, and governance structures among the three basin countries. Currently, these are limited by a deep lack of engagement with Indigenous knowledge and experience. Policy analysis for transboundary governance of water and fish resources must be improved to integrate Indigenous and local perspectives and assess the possibilities and barriers to transboundary coordination and cooperation. Drawing attention to the resilience of Indigenous communities this research him to emphasize the potential for foregrounding cultural diversity in freshwater governance to overcome institutional and national barriers to preserving the Amazon's biodiversity while sustaining the well-being of their communities.

11:45 AM -12:15 PM || Indigenous Technological Capacity Building: How to achieve ethical community-focused training endeavors that support traditional ecological knowledge

Presenter: Rayne Hawkins, Florida State University

In this paper, I use counter-mapping as a methodology to highlight the value of Indigenous knowledge, drawing on geovisualization methods to build Wet’suwet’en technological capacity to expose and contest settler geographies.The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) comprises nearly nine hundred and forty five thousand square kilometers, 95% of which remains unceded with no formal treaty agreements with the over 214 Indigenous nations in BC. A century has passed since the Indigenous nation of the Wet’suwet’en were removed from their territories to reserve allocations and nearly 50 years since negotiations began for a contemporary treaty. However, there are no agreements that cede authority to the Canadian government over Wet'suwet'en territory. Resource governance in Indigenous communities is impacted by the dichotomy between Western power and Indigenous knowledge. I will discuss my experience as a unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) trainer with a Wet’suwet’en field technician team and how my insight can impact future trainers’ ability to understand the gap in technological capacity and literacy between provincial government agencies and First Nations. This paper speaks to the current political geographies of First Nations communities in a time where extractive industries threaten reciprocal land relationships that are the basis for Wet’suwet’en hereditary governance system. Interviews and field notes revealed that a centralization of Wet’suwet’en community values, a focus on increasing sustainable capacity, and a priority of balancing knowledge transference between First Nations and researchers are necessary to incorporate in successful training endeavors.

12:15 -1:15 PM || Lunch break

1:15 - 1:45 PM || Data Knowledge, Data Access, and Data Sovereignty: Acknowledging inequities across historical sciences

Presenter: Michelle LeFebvre, University of Florida

1:45 - 2:15 PM || Community engagement and training GIS in Wemindji

Presenters: Lauraelena Guerrero, Independent researcher; Anthony Georgekish, Cree Nation of Wemindji; and Genevieve Reid, Florida International University

Over the past two years, I, alongside Eeyou Istchee Cree Youth in Wemindji, have been training and collaborating uses of geospatial applications for community projects. I plan to explore how collaborations and community engagement are at the core of the process, drawing from three years of experience that include remote training and on hands.

2:15 - 2:45 PM || A Critical Exploration of Indigenous Data Sovereignty within Geography

Presenters: Genevieve Reid, Florida International University; Jon Corbett, The University of British Columbia ; and Maui Hudson, University of Waikato

Geographers increasingly recognize Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) as a pivotal framework to address issues surrounding geographic data and mapping technologies. However, there remains a notable absence of a comprehensive definition that critically comprehends IDS within the context of geography. This absence raises concerns about the potential perpetuation of extractive practices and the "McDonaldization" of IDS, characterized by oversimplification and standardization. In this manuscript, we explore Indigenous Geospatial Data Sovereignty (IGDS) and its integration into an Indigenous research paradigm deeply rooted in, aligned with, supportive of, and expanding upon the broader IDS framework. Within our review, we emphasize incorporating Indigenous methodologies, ontologies, epistemologies, praxis, methodologies, and pedagogies, all of which are integral to a critical understanding of IGDS. By situating IGDS within this Indigenous research paradigm, we aim to pave the way for meaningful engagements with IGDS as a critical project within the field of geography. Our objective is to break away from extractive research practices and contribute to the emergence of reparative research projects that acknowledge and respect the sovereignty of Indigenous communities and their geospatial data.

2:45 - 3:00 PM || Break

3 PM- 5 PM || Final Conference Discussion