Routes/Roots: Maps & Resistance
Maps wield a significant amount of power. They construct our very lives, tell us where to go, how to get there, and determine our engagement with our surroundings. Maps construct what you care about as
Routes/Roots: Maps & Resistance
Maps wield a significant amount of power. They construct our very lives, tell us where to go, how to get there, and determine our engagement with our surroundings. Maps construct what you care about as they structure the communities we live in, the people we interact with. There are layers within maps, they are an archive of our past, and we can trace the evolution of our communities like the rings in a tree, as lines were drawn, redrawn, added, altered.
Maps have a power to control, to destroy, but also to liberate.
When we reflect on our colonial history, we recognize the way in which governments drew lines to restrict the rights of Indigenous peoples, to destroy communities. We can also see liberation within our own history, with the creation of Manitoba, a success for Métis activists. Human beings may have mastered the art of mapmaking, but we are not the original designers of it. The earth was the first cartographer, carving lines along the surface with water, our current lakes and rivers the remnants of this original design. It is a dissonance that we almost take for granted, as we think we have control over maps, but in fact, they also have control over us.
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