3,000 Indigenous Communities in Canada Finally on Google Maps

In an achievement many Indigenous groups are calling long overdue, over 3,000 Indigenous communities in Canada have been added to Google Maps and Google Earth.

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The project’s completion coincides with National Aboriginal Day in the country Wednesday. It was started seven years ago.

"It's important to me because there are so many Indigenous groups across the country and to not see them as an important fabric of a base map, just to not be recognized, it's insulting," said Steve DeRoy, a member of the Ebb and Flow First Nation in Manitoba, and one of the researchers working on this project, reported CBC.

"We are in our 150th year (of) Canada being a country; it's just one step closer to reconciliation."

The updated sites include both First Nations reserve lands, as well as treaty settlement lands belonging to Indigenous communities.

"This is a big moment, this is an opportunity. We actually kicked this project off seven years ago, so it's been a relatively long process and one that's definitely worth doing thoroughly and doing collaboratively," Google Canada's Alexandra Hunnings said.

DeRoy added that the project was political in nature through and through.

"It's unfortunate that Indigenous people have been excluded from the maps and it's taken a long time just to have that recognition — just to be showing on the maps," he said.