2:6 The Paper Tiger and A Mighty Mouse

Judge McEachern’s response to the map from the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en was to call it “the map that roared” (Sparke 468). In his article “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of a Nation,” Matthew Sparke identifies three possible readings of this statement, the first of which is the “colloquial notion of a paper tiger” (468). A paper tiger refers to something that appears threatening but is in reality ineffectual, according to dictionary.com. The phrase comes from a Chinese expression, most famously appearing in Mao’s Little Red Book. Providing a map as evidence in a court case tends to be pretty concrete, but McEachern was either unable or refused to acknowledge the stories outlined in the map of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en. The map had potential to be strong evidence, supporting the First Nations’ case, but it ultimately proved ineffectual, most likely due to McEachern’s biases, internalized or otherwise. A paper tiger may have a mighty roar, but is easily balled up and thrown away.

(Image courtesy of The Comic Ninja)

Sparke’s second suggestion is that McEachern is referencing The Mouse that Roared, a 1959 Peter Sellers film. This film is a comedy based on a satirical novel by Leonard Wibberly. The story is about the fictional, impoverished nation of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, that decides to engage in a war against the United States and lose, but things don’t go according to plan. The correlation here is that a tiny and presumed insignificant nation has taken up arms (metaphorically, in the case of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en map) against a larger, imperious body. In the fictional story, however, the smaller nation ends up with the power to subordinate the other, larger nations, and thus coordinate a movement towards world peace. Much of the satire in both the novel and the film adaptation also centres on the geopolitics of the Cold War, an interesting connection to the geopolitics of the case. If this is the reference McEachern made, it’s more likely that he intended it to be a dismissal of the potential power of the map, rather than the recognition of that potential to turn the case in the favour of those First Nations.

Both of these readings indicate McEachern’s intent to indicate the “plaintiffs as a ramshackled, anachronistic nation” (468). His ruling in favour of the defendant (the government) further reinforces his belief system when it comes to First Nations rights.

Sparke’s third reading is based on a political cartoon by Don Monet: “a cartoonist working for the Gitxsan and Wet’suweten:” “the resistance in the First Nations’ remapping of the land: the cartography’s roaring refusal of the orientation systems… and all the other accoutrements of Canadian colonialism on native land” (468). This is likely not what McEachern was trying to say, but it turns his degrading comment on its head and becomes a mode of empowerment. Many minorities have done something similar when they have taken terms or phrases of degradation and turned them into a positive term for themselves; they take back the language that oppressed them. And in the end, McEachern’s decision was overturned, opening up more possibilities for First Nations when negotiating with the Canadian government.

WORKS CITED

“Paper Tiger.” Def. 1. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged, 2016. Web. 21 Oct 2016.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of a Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 463- 495. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

troz2000. “The Mouse the Roared TRailer.” Online Video Clip. Youtube, 17 May 2008. Web. 21 Oct 2016.

Watterson, Bill. “Calvin and Hobbes.” The Comic Ninja. N.p. 19 Nov 2011. Web. 21 Oct 2016.