Oral History as Cartographic Method: Siekopai Mappings and the Reclamation of Pë’këya

This thesis examines how oral histories function as a cartographic method within Siekopai mapping practices and territorial reclamation efforts in the northwestern Amazon. Focusing on the Siekopai Nation’s struggle to reclaim Pë’këya, an ancestral territory along the present-day Ecuador–Peru border, I argue that oral histories are not simply narratives represented within maps, but relational and place-based practices that orient and shape mapping itself. Drawing on my collaborative work with the Siekopai Nation, this field-informed study examines how oral histories organize territorial knowledge through movement, intergenerational transmission, and relations among human and more-than-human worlds, while also shaping participatory mapping practices and legal claims to territory. Oral histories emerge as a cartographic method by orienting mapping practices, enabling territorial reclamation, challenging dominant representations of territory, and foregrounding more relational and accountable approaches to cartographic research on Indigenous lands.