What Rundstrom has done in this paper is highlight the large rift between Euro-North American and Indigenous American school of geographic thought. I find it quite obvious that these differences exist, but never would I have thought to compare the methods of spatial cognition used by natives such as the Inuit and Hopi to those used by proponents of GIS and GI Science. I am a product of colonialism and the Euro-American school of thought, and more recently the Euro-Canadian school of GIS, so to me it seems obvious the only way of analyzing spatial phenomena is to treat nature as non-human objects to be taken out of context and subdivided into layers and databases.
Rundstrom compares this Spatial analyst way of thinking with Native American practices of spirituality and the passage of knowledge. An example of these two practices would be how the Hopi treat water as a spiritual entity, and the selective process through which Native Americans pass down geographic knowledge. At first, I found this ridiculous. Why compare an advanced technological system with the teachings of my high school history classes? I was well aware of the Native’s oneness with nature and their uncanny abilities to communicate with their surroundings, but how can their primitive technology compare to the advanced methods we use today and at the time of this papers publishing?
Smitty_1