Smithsonian Magazine has retracted a two-year-old article about an interactive online map describing indigenous lands in North America because the map “did not meet the standards of scholarship we expect of academic projects we cover as part of our editorial purview.”
The move followed sharp criticism from a pro-Israel group about a map produced by a nonprofit organization that formed the basis of the article.
The original article, published on Oct.13, 2022 and titled “This Interactive Map Shows Which Indigenous Lands You Live On,” was based on a map created by Native Land, a Canadian non-profit the article said “is focused on improving both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people’s relationship with the lands around them.” The article encouraged readers to use the map in order to see which Indigenous communities resided in their city, state, or zip code.
The article included an image of the map for North America — see the image at the top of this post — and linked to Native Land’s website with a map of the world.
In response to a request for comment, a magazine spokesperson told Retraction Watch: “A number of readers reached out to the Smithsonian with their concerns about the Native Lands map, specifically about its treatment of Israel.”
The retraction note on the article does not mention concerns about Israel, and a spokesperson said that would not change.
Native Land’s depiction of Israel on its website first drew attention from “Pens From Swords,” a pro-Israel WhatsApp activist group that organizes protests about anti-semitism and anti-Israel/-Zionism on social media and elsewhere online. It has been publicly aggressive in pressuring meeting venues to cancel meetings they consider Pro-Palestinian.
According to Pens From Swords, the group’s members believe Native Lands had “erased Israel” by placing “Palestine” over the outline of the current borders of the Jewish state.
Native Land did not respond to a request for comment. However, Aaron Carapella, an advisor to the group and owner of Tribal Nations Maps, criticized Smithsonian’s decision to retract the story. He told Retraction Watch in an email that, while he had not done any “work used by Native Land” for its online maps.
“However, my own work has been a victim of cancel culture as well,” he said. “The notion that the Smithsonian would claim their [Native Land] work is not ‘scholarly’ is code for ‘it wasn’t created by an academic from one our approved institutions.’”
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