Special Event: Counter Mapping Articulates What Is Between

As a lifelong farmer, land and water practitioner, natural resources manager, and museum director, Jim Enote has thought hard about maps and mapping by challenging how we think about, use, and view maps. Coming to us virtually from his home in Zuni, New Mexico, Jim will talk about his experiences with maps and new approaches to map-making.

Counter maps appear from neglected spaces, forgotten peoples, intervals of crisis and rapture, and in the pattern languages of our lives.

Jim Enote is a Zuni tribal member, lifelong farmer, CEO of the Colorado Plateau Foundation, Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Grand Canyon Trust, Board member of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and serves on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society. Formerly, he served on the Board of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. Jim is also a National Geographic Society Explorer, Carnegie Foundation Senior Fellow, and a New Mexico Community Luminaria.

Jim’s service the past forty-five years includes natural resource, cultural resource, philanthropic, and arts assignments for many organizations including UNESCO, UNDP, International Secretariat for Water, Nordic Council of Ministers, Tibet Child Nutrition Project, the Mountain Institute, National Geographic Society, US Bureau of Indian Affairs, US National Park Service, Zuni Tribe, and several major charitable foundations, museums, and universities. He has written in Heritage In the Context of Globalization; Science, Technology, and Human Values; Sacredness as a Means to Conservation; Mapping Our Places; Indigenous People and Sustainable Development; A:shiwi A:wan Ulohnanne, and Redrock Stories, to name a few. Recent short pieces include; We Cannot Live by Sentiments Alone, The Museum Collaboration Manifesto, Buyer Beware, What I Tell Boys, and Please Don’t Call Me a Warrior.

In 2010 while serving as the Director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum, Jim was awarded the first Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology during the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference. In 2013 he received the Guardian of Culture and Lifeways Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, and in 2016 received the Hewett Award for leadership and service to the New Mexico museum community and achievements in the museum field. In 2021, Jim received the Wilburforce Conservation Leadership Award for decades of service protecting natural habitats for all dependent life forms.

In his role as CEO of Colorado Plateau Foundation, Jim plans, directs, and evaluates the Foundation’s program of grantmaking, fundraising, development, and fund investment in addition to managing staff, overseeing programming and operations, and working with the CPF Board of Directors. As a fundraiser and educator to the philanthropic community, Jim connects, engages, and leverages funding to support regional issues on the Colorado Plateau. 

Jim lives in Zuni, New Mexico, his hometown.

Jim Enote photo: Rucha Chitnis
Banner image: Levon Loncassion, Deer Springs and Havasu Creek, 2010. Watercolor on paper, 47 x 20 in.