Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

TAHLEQUAH, OK - Employees from the Choctaw Nation attended a two-week training workshop at the Cherokee Nation GeoData Center earlier this month. Using legal descriptions from deeds and other sources, the Choctaw students learned to convert data on their tribal trust lands from textual information into a digital geographic database.

Tim Noahubi & Holly Boldin

Using software developed by a former Cherokee Nation employee, Tony Glass, Choctaw Nation’s Holly Boldin and Tim Noahubi put 30 tracts of Choctaw tribal trust lands into a geographical information system (GIS).

Those tracts include areas such as the Tuskahoma Complex, tribal truck stops, agricultural lands, a shopping center, head start location and several others. Digital aerial photography and USGS quadrangles provided backgrounds for the display maps generated during the workshop. Bolding and Noahubi returned to the Choctaw Nation with new skills and customized software application tools, which will allow them to continue the task of developing their own geographic tribal land database. They now plan to apply those skills to maintain and update their new dataset of tribal trust lands and to undertake the enormous task of adding restricted lands to their GIS.

"I see some partnerships with the Choctaw GIS in the future," said Laura Harjo, manager of the Cherokee Nation GeoData Center. "They are a networking source for us. We can help them on projects and they can help us. I definitely plan on using them as a resource."

This workshop was established and carried out as part of a contractual agreement between the Choctaw Nation Office of Environmental Health and the Cherokee Nation’s primary GIS program, the GeoData Center. Harjo and cartographers Crystal Bond and Verlita Sugar facilitated the training.