Maps and Memes: Redrawing Culture, Place, and Identity in Indigenous Communities (McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series)

by Gwilym Lucas Eades

Maps and cartography have long been used in the lands and resources offices of Canada's indigenous communities in support of land claims and traditional-use studies. Exploring alternative conceptualizations of maps and mapmaking, Maps and Memes theorizes the potentially creative and therapeutic uses of maps for indigenous healing from the legacies of residential schools and colonial dispossession. Gwilym Eades proposes that maps are vehicles for what he calls "place-memes" - units of cultural knowledge that are transmitted through time and across space. Focusing on Cree, Inuit, and northwest coast communities, the book explores intergenerational aspects of mapping, landscape art practice, and identity. Through decades of living in and working with indigenous communities, Eades has constructed an ethnographically rich account of mapping and spatial practices across Canada. His extended participation in northern life also informs this theoretically grounded account of journeying on the land for commemoration and community healing. Interweaving narrative accounts of journeys with academic applications for mapping the phenomena of indigenous suicide and suicide clusters, Maps and Memes lays the groundwork for understanding current struggles of indigenous youth to strengthen their identities and foster greater awareness of traditional territory and place.

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m disappointed in this book. It’s an interesting premise but just poorly executed. In chapter 4, the author glosses over Indigenous peoples’ very real and very justifiable skepticism of white people, claiming this counts as racism because it holds all white people accountable for historical actions. That’s … not what racism is, and it’s frustrating (but not surprising) that this author doesn’t fully explore what might cause this distrust. For those who are new to this discussion: there’s no such thing as reverse racism.

The writing style is overly complicated (like an undergrad using all the biggest words they know). For example, this sentence: “Oral communication as representational media places discrete segments of place-based activity within a public setting alongside art as yet another set of objects for consideration”. There’s got to be a simpler way to get that idea across, and the book is full of such examples.

Also the book is organized terribly. For example, 23 pages into chapter 6, the author writes “this book will examine…”