Question 3
In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.”
Before reading Sparke’s article, and having read the lesson’s reading from Erika, the term ‘colonized mind’ jumped up off the screen when I read what Erika had to say about Judge McEachern’s statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared” concerning the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en map. What Erika said was “he was not able to see that this map charts territorial boundaries and land uses that existed previous to European re-mapping of those lands: he could not see what he did not believe existed”. This statement made by Erika displays the bias, close-minded way of thinking the Settlers have. The line “my way or the highway’ works to describe the feelings of the Settlers and most importantly Judge McEachern. The idea that there is anything out there other than what he knows is ridiculous to him, and that anything other than what he knows should be dismissed as irrelevant.
I bring up the idea of dismissal because this is how Spark explains the reaction of McEachern. McEachern dismissed the claims of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en and their map, through a colonized mind focusing on colonized claims that the rights of the Aboriginal people were extinguished and thus not reliable or relevant. The ‘roared’ statement as Spark explains through Don Monet’s statement led to an evoked resistance in the First Nations. The map was a symbol for the roaring that the First Nations were physically doing to get themselves heard, resisting against the strict guidelines put in place by the colonizers; placed on their culture, their language, and even their maps. This map was a hard symbol of the refusal of the First Nations regarding the: “orientation systems, the trap lines, the property lines, the electricity lines, the pipelines, the logging roads, the clear-cuts, and all the other accouterments of Canadian colonialism on native land” (468).This last quote really emphasizes the importance that the land holds in the First Nations heart. What they are fighting against are the trap lines, the property lines, the electricity lines etc., which are all man made things, things that were not there before the moving in of the settlers. The map of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en shows the land, the sources that the land provides and the beauty of the land that they call home.
I also want to discuss the word ‘roared’ and the image it creates. When we think of something roaring we for the most part connect that to the lion or tiger, the top predator in the animal kingdom and I find this quite the oxymoron. McEachern has used this descriptive term which we connect to the king of the animals to describe a group of people who he sees as inferior to his people- so what does that make him ?
Works Cited
Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 88, no. 3, 1998, pp. 468-470.
It’s hard for me to even imagine that immigrants to Canada (now called) felt they could control the land. Was it partly because Canada’s land is so vast, and they saw no harm? Or was it that they simply did not regard the Indigenous people because they were different and unacceptable to their culture and religion. Did Susanna Moodie ever feel guilty or concerned for the Indigenous people? (Never read the whole book…just intro.) Were there pangs of guilt, similar to mine when I contribute to destroying the environment because it is allowed and accepted? (I try to reduce my footprint, but I am still guilty of much.)
Hi Kimberly.
The ideas of how the immigrants believed they could control the land because of it being so vast, or that they disregarded the Indigenous people as acceptable are both forms of excuses. I think we as a society are so good at creating excuses in order to take us out of the spotlight that will place the blame upon us. We do whatever it takes, for the most part, to make sure that whatever we have done, and in this case, taking the land of the Indigenous people and making it ours, can not be seen as a negative action created by us. We create reasons as we would call them which are in fact seen as excuses by those other than the immigrants. I cannot answer whether Susanna Moodie was ever guilty because to be guilty mustn’t the immigrants realize that the reasons they gave are in fact excuses and thus they are in the wrong. Can they accept to be wrong and feel guilty for the people they trod all over for so many years. Is it too embarrassing?
Hi,
I enjoyed reading your response to this question; it’s a question I also chose to write on. I notice that, like me, you were struck by the visual connotations accompanying the chosen word “roar”. It’s hard to read that word and NOT visualize a lion, or somesuch other wild animal. However, to my mind this association with the wild animal, the “sauvage” is actually a negative, as oppposed to positive, connotation. I’m just wondering if you would agree? To be more explicit, what I’m referencing here is a concern that “roar” functions as a loaded word with racist implications because it effectively equates the First Nations peoples and their land with a limited, European notion of all that is “wild” and “untamed”. Viewed this way, the judge’s word choice takes on different significance.
Hi Anne,
Thank you for your comment. Although I discussed the term “roar” in connection to the image of the animal kingdom and the king of all animals, I do in part agree with what you say. There is a slight negative connotation now that I think about it. I do believe that it depends on the readers perspective on deciding how they choose to view it. This is a word that causes a choice: 1) whether we see it as a progressive movement for the Indigenous people, pushing forward, making a roar so that they can be heard loud and clear; 2)or as the immigrants see them, wild and untamed, roaring because they are unable to articulate words in a way that is accepted and understood by the settlers/colonizers.