Cultural Impact

The “Land Acquisition and Dispossession” project explores how land policy, migration, and colonialism shaped the United States. By mapping homesteading claims, it reveals how national expansion was built on the forced removal of Native peoples.

Cultural Impact:
Through interactive maps and narrative essays, the project helps users see the human costs of westward expansion. It challenges traditional pioneer stories and shows the significance of the Indian Reservation dispossession over many years of colonization.

Social Justice Relevance:
This project shows how digital humanities can promote historical accountability by using open data to expose patterns of inequality.

Key Example:
By displaying homesteading patents over former Indigenous territories, the map shows that unused or empty land was actually home to Native nations, reforming U.S. expansion as colonial entitlement rather than pure opportunity.