Maps and Memes

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.

Contributor: Gwilym Lucas Eades Gwilym Lucas Eades is lecturer in human and environmental geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.

"A thought-provoking book, Maps and Memes adds to our understanding of the colonial legacies of cartography in indigenous Canada. Gwilym Eades makes the important argument that maps have shaped native reality by defining the pre-existing spatial structures of the land with imposed names and borders." Hans M. Carlson, author of Home is the Hunter: The James Bay Cree and Their Land