BY KAREN BOSSICK
Cameron Ellis has found a unique way to save the rainforests.
This mapmaker and anthropologist works with indigenous communities to map territories that are threatened by logging, mining, ranching, drug trafficking and other developmental pressures.
Ellis will talk about his mapping projects in Panama’s Darien Gap, Guyana Shield and the Peruvian Amazon at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, at Ketchum’s Community Library.
Ellis says globalization has brought immense pressure on indigenous people and their land in the past 50 years. And they often find themselves caught in a battle with narco-guerrillas and corrupt or ineffective government officials.
“The world looks very different to an indigenous person who is fighting against odds for their land…or just trying to cover a few miles of highway among unfriendly faces,” says Cameron Ellis, a Seattle native who began working with Native Future in 2006. “Our goal is to help these people get their stories out via maps, photos, films and animations.”
Ellis studied political science at UCLA, then evolutionary anthropology at the University of New Mexico where he looked for common algorithms in geographic patterns in human evolutionary ecology.
The maps he created in Eastern Panama helped result in legislative changes in Panama creating a legal mechanism for indigenous communities to apply for permanent title to their lands.
He currently runs the GIS shop at the Sonoran Institute, a Bozeman-based planning and conservation NGO working on land-use issues in western North America, while continuing to provide support to Native future. He also has worked with the Peregrine Fund, a raptor research and conservation institution.