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.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-223) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:
The long walk -- Place-memes: Indigeneity, identity, and performance -- Cree ethnogeography -- Canada, cartography, and indigenous peoples -- Counter-mapping colonization -- The evolutin of critical cartographic inscription -- Commemorative toponymies of trauma -- Meme maps -- Towards an indigenous geoweb.
Book
