A Roaring Map and the Ongoing Conflict of Land Title
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.”
Sparke’s article, A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation, was both engaging and nuanced, making it interesting to read but challenging to unpack. Nevertheless, I wanted to address this question because of how closely I believe it relates to the current events happening in Northern BC (Wet’suwet’en people vs. Coastal GasLink). In this blog, I hope to link Sparke’s analysis of Judge McEachern to modern-day events.
During the landmark trial Delgamuukw v. The Queen, Judge Allan McEachern was presented with a map of Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan traditional territories (Sparke 468). Upon looking at this map, Judge McEachern exclaimed: “we’ll call this the map that roared.” (Sparke 468) In Sparke’s article, the section interestingly titled “Contrapuntal Cartographies”, analyzes the meaning of McEachern’s statement.
Sparke’s title for this section sets the stage for the conflict between McEachern’s interpretation of the map and the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxan people’s fight for title to their land. Contrapuntal refers to the musical term “counterpoint”, which is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour. I believe Sparke uses this term to help illustrate how the relationship between colonial settlers and Indigenous peoples is interdependent and connected, but that this relationship has significant differences when it comes to history, claim to land, and culture.
Sparke’s first analysis of Judge McEachern’s statement “we’ll call this the map roars” is that it could be his initial reaction to opening up this large map and referring to it with the “colloquial notion of a “paper tiger”. A paper tiger is the English translation of the Chinese term “zhilaohu”, which is a term that refers to one that is outwardly powerful or dangerous but inwardly weak or ineffectual. Sparke, by classifying Judge McEachern’s statement in relation to this colloquial term, illustrates that he thinks the Judge may view the map as something which looks complete, and powerful, and which the plaintiffs have used to attempt to demonstrate their strength and power, but in fact, is weak and not powerful. Sparke is saying that the Judge discounts the truth and believability of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan map, in part, because the Judge cannot read the map in the way that it has been presented. This is not uncommon, as Indigenous systems of mapping territory have been often overlooked and have been asked to fit the colonial systems of mapping.
Sparke’s second analysis of the Judge’s statement is that it could be a reference to a movie that satirizes cold war geo-politics entitled “The Mouse that Roared”. This movie is about a fictitious small European nation that decides the only way to get out of their economic woes is to declare war on the United States, with a plan to lose and receive foreign aid. In the movie, the plan does not go as they would have hoped, and they are unable to surrender and actually capture an ultimate weapon that can destroy Earth, ultimately winning the war they had planned to lose. Keeping the movie plot in mind, Sparke explains that the “comments might be interpreted as a derisory scripting of the plaintiffs as a ramschk-lef, anachronistic nation” essentially comparing the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people to the people of the fictitious European nation in “The Mouse that Roared.” (Sparke 468). However, Sparke notes that his initial interpretation may have been wrong, as “Don Monet, a cartoonist working for the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en, [makes] clear, the Chief Justice’s reference to a roaring map simultaneously evoke[s] the resistance in the First Nations’ remapping of the land: the cartography’s roaring refusal of 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.” (Sparke 468). In this quote, Monet is explaining that the map which the Judge refers to as a “roaring map” is one which the Judge sees as roaring only because of its resistance to the expected and accepted Canadian colonial form of a map and his consequent inability to understand the map. With the removal of the colonial map elements like pipelines, logging roads, and more, the Wet’suwet’en have shared a map that the Judge feels he can only claim is “roaring”, i.e. impossible to understand and inaccurate.
For Monet, and for us contemporary readers, it is clear that the Judge was trying to make sense of the map from the perspective of a colonial settler and he was not open to reading the map in a different way, or considering and understanding that the map the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people offered was in fact a much more accurate representation of how the land began. This sentiment, of wanting to believe the land first began when it was settled by the European colonizers is echoed in Asch’s writing as he explains that for Europeans, their arrival is chapter 1, but for Indigenous people’s the arrival of the Europeans is already chapter 15. This discrepancy in understanding of the history of the land leads to claims like Judge McEachern’s that this map is simply impossible as it does not fit with his euro-centric map.
Ultimately, Judge McEachern dismissed the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en’s claims in a 400 page judgment with arguments about his view of First Nations societies and his understanding of Canadian history. In his judgment, he “systematically dismissed Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en claims to ownership, jurisdiction, and damages.” (Sparke 470).
Beginning with an appeal in 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned McEachern’s judgment and the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people were granted the title to their lands in a landmark case. The case continues to be relevant as treaty negotiations continue and companies operate in the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en traditional territories without permission. This case couldn’t be more relevant today, as the conflict between Coastal GasLink and the Wet’suwet’en peoples continues. While the ruling makes it clear that these people have title to the land, government enforcement to ignore this title and complete this project continues. In some ways, the current government, by ignoring the land rights, is saying something much like what Judge McEachern said about the “roaring map” – that your land and the way you choose to use it does not fit with the way the colonizers would like to use it, so we will ignore that it is your land.
CBC News
Works Cited
Asch, Michael. “Canadian Sovereignty and Universal History.” Storied Communities: Narratives of Contact and Arrival in Constituting Political Community. Ed. Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremy Webber Hester Lessard. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2011. 29 – 39. Print.
Beaudoin, Gerald. “Delgamuukw Case.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. August 2019. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/delgamuukw-case
Bellrichard, Chantelle. “Coastal GasLink returning to work in injunction area in Wet’suwet’en territory.” CBC News. Canadian Broadcasting Company. Feb 2020. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/coastal-gaslink-back-to-work-wetsuweten-1.5460328
Chisholm, Libby and Malone, Molly. “Indigenous Territory.” The Candian Encyclopedia. July 2016. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-territory
“Contrapuntal.” Lexico. Oxford Dictionary. N.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/contrapuntal
Globe Staff. “Wet’suwet’en chiefs vs. RCMP: A guide to the dispute over B.C.’s Coastal GasLink pipeline.” The Globe and Mail. January 2020. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-wetsuweten-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-rcmp-explainer/
“Paper tiger.” Grammarist. N.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://grammarist.com/idiom/paper-tiger/
Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 463- 495. Web. 15 Feb. 2020.
“The Mouse that Roared.” IMDB. n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2020. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/
Eva Dvorak
February 24, 2020 — 10:56 am
Hi Katarina,
I’m glad you were able to connect Sparke’s analysis of Judge McEachern’s comment to the current issues surrounding Wet’suwet’en land. It seems that settler-colonialism is always demanding that Indigenous ways of life conform to its structures; we see this in the trial’s cartography (and thus, McEachern’s comment) and we see it now, in the Canadian government’s push to enforce it’s on economic agenda on Indigenous lands.
Rita George is a Wet’suwet’en hereditary subchief, a matriarch who translated the Delgamuukw trial. On behalf of the community elders and matriarchs she voiced concerns that the “influx of outside protesters who are pursuing their own policy goals has put a damper on the exchange of opinions inside the community”. (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-thats-not-the-way-of-our-ancestors-wetsuweten-matriarch-speaks/) She says that the ability of the Wet’suwet’en people to determine their overall, communal opinion is being damaged by the overwhelming presence of outside groups (despite their good intentions). George’s interview calls into question whether it is right for other groups to protest on behalf the Wet’suwet’en community.
Most of these outside groups and protesters are aiming to support the Wet’suwet’en people but does Rita George have a point? Could their own political opinions/goals be interfering with clarity with which the Wet’suwet’en are able to articulate (or even determine) their own decisions?
I know this is a big question but just wondering if you have any thoughts.
Thanks!
Eva
Katarina Smith
February 24, 2020 — 1:57 pm
Hi Eva,
Thanks for your comment and for the link to the interview, I really liked reading this different perspective. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Wet’suwet’en case and it is not a simple clear cut case.
I think Rita George absolutely has a point – I think it’s a point we need to all listen to, because it is coming from within the community. A lot of the protests I have seen have been relating the Wet’suwet’en land conflict to climate change, which has been a topic protested frequently in the past year or so. While I think climate change and the CGL are related, it seems like using this case as a way to protest the larger climate change protest could be minimizing the struggles and issues of the Wet’suwet’en people, which is what I think Rita is alluding to in her interview. Some protestors are protesting the pipeline, and some are protesting the use of Indigenous land – these two things are separate issues but have come together in this case and in the protests.
It may also be challenging for the Wet’suwet’en people to even meet and discuss, and to meet with CGL and government officials due to all of the protests – it can be hard to even get around when there’s an influx of barricades, so that could be interfering with the Wet’suwet’en people’s ability to articulate and determine their decision.
Finally, I recently read a troubling article about the railway blockades and how this is negatively impacting groceries access to food, farmers access to propane, and people’s abilities to get drinking water. While some protestors have said this is the point, so that it forces change, I think it is a bit troubling that we are putting people in danger: “Railway folks will tell you that for every day service is stopped, it takes about three or four days to recover.”
Thanks for your question!
JacobKosh
February 24, 2020 — 8:09 pm
Hi Katarina,
Great blog post! Very thorough and well written, a joy to read. After reading Sparke’s article, it brought to mind how colonial maps are! Not only are they a “form of literacy” that was introduced post-contact, but their very purpose is to designate boundaries and control populations and regions. To come into a new country and start making maps without consultation with prior inhabitants is bonkers. This brings to mind when CGL first started construction in Wet’suwet’en territory last winter and a bulldozer destroyed a trapline because they did not understand the lay of the land before inserting themselves into it. For anyone to ask a culture not versed in cartography to translate their understanding of land into the form of a map, and then not even accept this translation, is a blatant rejection of any attempt at equality and reconciliation. The ongoing respect that Indigenous people have extended to colonial “Canada” to only be repeated pushed away is disheartening and comes at no surprise. Indigenous people have had to adjust their way of life so much to try to survive, yet “Canada” will not even meet halfway. In regards to the contemporary dispute up north, even the simplest of requests such as “How about our leaders meet with your leaders and we can come to a common understanding?” or, “How about you don’t build a pipeline through our territory?” are met with no consideration.