Biographical Note
G. Malcolm Lewis (1930-2022) was a professor, historian, and dedicated scholar in the field of Indigenous mapping. He was born in Carcroft, Doncaster, England and graduated from the University of Sheffield with a BSc in geography in 1952. In 1958, Lewis began teaching in the University of Sheffield's Department of Geography, where he would remain for the next 40 years. He would go on to become an authority on indigenous mapping in North America, with a particular focus on the "cartographic encounter" between the North American Indigenous nations and European explorers and colonists. Lewis' research and work explored how early European explorers of the North American continent acquired and used maps from Indigenous peoples, and how they subsequently used the information in their own maps. At other points in his career, Lewis studied the different ways white explorers, fur traders, missionaries, and colonists perceived and portrayed the Great Plains of North America. Lewis was a frequent contributor of articles to journals such as Great Plains Quarterly, Imago Mundi, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Cartographica, and The Map Collector. Notably, Lewis was the co-editor of volume 2.3 in the History of Cartography reference work (see selected bibliography); he also contributed a chapter to that work, "Maps made by North American Indians and Inuits."