Online Activity: Map a Cultural Landscape

A “cultural landscape” is a place that is important to a person or group of people. Cultural landscapes have stories to tell about the people who lived there. In this activity, you will become a historian by making a cultural landscape map for a loved one.

Let’s Get Started

1. Pick someone you know who remembers what life was like a long time ago. You’ll need to ask this person questions about their life.

2. Contact your person and set up a time to talk with them.

3. Gather your materials. You’ll need a pen and paper to take down what they say. You may also want a recording device, like on your phone, to make note-taking easier.

Interview Questions

To make your map, you’ll need to know where your person lived and stories about their life there. Depending on the person, you can choose to make a map of just one town or make a map of many different places. While asking questions, remember that you’ll need to know where things happened in order to make your map. Here are some questions you could ask:

• When and where were you born?

• How many times have you moved to a new place?

• How has the place where you live changed since you first moved there?

• Did you do any sports or clubs when you were in school?

• Where did you get together with people for special occasions?

• Where did people in your town get their food?

• When you were a teenager, where did you go for fun?

• Where did you take your kids to play outside?

• What was your first job? What job did you have the longest?

Making Your Map

1. Decide what your map will look like. Did your person live in a single town for their entire life, or did they move across the world to a new country? Will you make a single map or a series of maps? What time period will your map show?

2. Draw your map. You may want to use the internet to find a bird’s-eye view of the place you are trying to draw. This will help you draw a basic outline of the place. Then, add in the buildings, natural features, and landmarks that your person told you about.

3. Label your map. To do this, you can write down the names of buildings, streets, and towns. But the most important things to write down are the facts that you would not find on a regular map. If your person speaks another language, write down the words they use. If your person went fishing at a specific spot on the river, label that spot. Use the empty space in your map to write down pieces of the stories they told you.

Now that you have your map, save it in a safe place. You may also want to make a copy to give to the person you interviewed. Did you learn something new about how people lived in the past? Is there a place that you see differently now? How was this person’s life different from your life? How was it similar?

The Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail works with Tribes and Universities to produce Indigenous Cultural Landscape Reports.

Read the Indigenous Cultural Landscape reports.