2.4 The Map That Roared
by admin
In his article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation” Matthew Sparke recalls memorable words uttered by Chief Justice Allan McEachern while presiding over a court case regarding land claims made by the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en peoples.
The Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en presented a map in court, which was intended as evidence of sovereignty and illustrated their traditional land holdings. In response McEachern exclaimed, inexplicably, “We’ll call it the map that roared” (468).
Sparke goes on to offer a variety of possible interpretations for McEachern’s cryptic statement. While he notes that these words could reference the idiomatic phrase “paper tiger” (Tse-tung, 1956), Sparke ultimately asserts the belief that McEachern’s turn of phrase pays homage, perhaps unintentionally, to First Nations people’s powerful claim upon the lands, inhabited for generations by their ancestors, which were forcibly stripped from them with the arrival of European settlers.
It is possible McEachern’s use of the word “roar” suggests to Sparke the unconscious (and rather colonial) evocation of something powerful, aggressive, vocal. In any case Sparke ascribes to McEachern’s words an awareness and appreciation of ferocious, unwavering intent on the part of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people, who, determined to reclaim their homeland, chose to fight a long legal battle with the Canadian government.
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. Sept. 1998. DOI: 10.1111. Web.
Tse-tung, Mao. “U.S. Imperialism is a Paper Tiger, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung.” Marxists.org. 2004. Web
Hello,
I enjoy your style of writing Anne. The insight that Sparke ultimately believes McEachern’s comment pays homage, if unintentionally, to the Gitixsan and Wet’suwet’en peoples cause is interesting. Do you think this is a case of the underlying subtlety and meaning of Judge McEachern’s comment being lost through a form of storytelling or repeated media writing? And, only through Sparke’s cartography work does one realize the actual intent of the comment?
It certainly seems possible that the judge had intendeded his words to be understood in a particular way, and that this sprcific import was ultimately lost over the course of time. If this is the case, we are left with an interesting example of a recurrent theme in this class which is the destruction of meaning and content when remediated from spoken to written and vice versa. Typically we discuss this dilemma in the context of First Nations aurality, but here we can see that it may be an issue within the society of the colonizer as well.