{"id":29940,"date":"2026-10-09T10:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T14:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/?post_type=story&p=29940"},"modified":"2026-10-15T15:12:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T19:12:20","slug":"cartography-as-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2026\/10\/09\/cartography-as-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Cartography as dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Cartographer Margaret Wickens Pearce, M.A. \u201995, Ph.D. \u201998, runs in the morning. The rhythmic cycle of feet hitting the ground is essential to clearing busy thoughts and making way for epiphanies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe run is extremely important to my mental and emotional health as well as my creative understanding of my work because all this stuff comes up,\u201d Pearce says. \u201cRunning is essential to getting out of a rut because something about the state of mind that it puts me in is really helpful for understanding which direction is a good way forward and which ways are non-starters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pearce is speaking by Zoom from Galena, Illinois, where she\u2019s been stationed for months. She\u2019s hard at work on the Mississippi Dialogues project, an intertribal collaborative public art project that reimagines possibilities for Mississippi River flood management through situated cartographic design while preserving the Indigenous knowledge and experience associated with the waterbody. Pearce, a Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member who lives and works on Penobscot traditional territory in Rockland, Maine, is mapping public testimonies about flooding in collaboration with the Nations whose homelands are along the river, including the Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Meskwaki, and Ioway peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Beadwork<\/span>
\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Meskwaki beadwork<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Pearce is currently focusing on a 200-mile stretch of the Mississippi from the mouth of the Saint Croix River in Hastings, Minnesota, to the mouth of the Galena River. This fall, large-format map panels will be installed along the river, one at Colvill Park in Red Wing, Minnesota, and another in the Casper Bluff Nature Preserve in Galena. Both parks are free and accessible, places where people enjoy being with the river, walking their dogs, or throwing a Frisbee. One side of the panels will display wood artwork about the river by an Indigenous artisan. The other side will be a map by Pearce that elevates Indigenous place names along the river, interweaving traditional stories and Indigenous testimony from interviews Pearce has been conducting all year. Mississippi Dialogue will recapture the lost history of the area before Army Corps of Engineers projects of the 20th century altered the terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div><\/span>
\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople have told me that they’re excited about the project and look forward to learning what the panels have to say,\u201d Pearce says. \u201cThey believe it will be a welcome addition to public dialogue about the river, because everyone is so curious about the stories and the important Indigenous place names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople love this river \u2014 everybody does. I think Mississippi Dialogues brings in a whole other dimension of appreciation and understanding.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n