Chief Justice McEachern’s way of handling the case Delgamuukw v. the Queen is a case that shows the evidence of how Canada has historically treated First Nations communities through legal disputes. Through Matthew Sparkes’ interpretation of this legal proceeding, it is evident that Justice McEachern did not seem to take the evidence the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people provided to prove their sovereignty from the colonial governing bodies severe. As McEachern stated, “We will call this the map that roared” in eyes was a map that attempted that contrasted the cartographic perspective colonial peoples had on the Canadian landscape (468). Furthermore, Sparke interprets this comment made by McEachern sound like he was making a correlation to the satirical film “The Mouse that Roared” in the context that they were fighting a losing battle (468).

Sparke perceives McEachern’s comments to be a “paper tiger” in which he knows that the mapping evidence provided appears to be convincing or threatening but uses his judicial power to make it appear not to be the “smoking gun evidence” needed (468). However, the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people used the map to tell their story of their connection to the land and their territorial sovereignty long before English and French people came to Canada.

McEachern’s comment considers the map as a threat and contrasting view to the whole economic system they built as “the (First Nation) 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 accoutrements of Canadian colonialism on native land” (468). In this case, whether the plaintiffs had a substantial amount of evidence to prove their sovereignty on the mapped land, Justice’s like McEachern showed a lack of comprehension for the Canadian landscape’s real history based on their claims.

It is evident that Canada’s legal governing officials showed a lack of non-partisanship throughout these legal proceedings among Indigenous communities and only acted within their colonial interests through Sparkes’ lens. Chief Justice McEachern’s decision to not give legal recognition to the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people’s land-based on the evidence they provide is systemic proof that Indigenous communities fail to be perceived as independent governing bodies legally. In contrast, Canada’s legal bodies see Indigenous communities like the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan as an integration into the colonial system. 

Works Cited:

“Econommic Activity in Canada.” GEO6HMS, 2016, geo6hms.weebly.com/economicactivity1.html.

Sparke, M. “Figure 1 from A Map That Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation: Semantic Scholar.” Semantic Scholar, 1 Jan. 1998, www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Map-that-Roared-and-an-Original-Atlas%3A-Canada%2C-of-Sparke/2877846a8126623bd1bccddc415bd4cf59be357a/figure/0.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map That Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Politics, 2017, pp. 481–514., doi:10.4324/9781315246512-24.