Mapping in, on, towards Aboriginal space: trading routes and an ethics of artistic inquiry

Introduction Unlike Cartesian maps which are largely projections of conceptual territory and the power relations that they imply, these map-works explore a lived experience and an alternative reality, both materially and metaphysically. These maps offer an opportunity to investigate and visually manifest the gap between what is deeply known about a place and what is merely drawn on a common map. (Gellman ‘TerritoReality’ didactic for Exhibition in Red Plains Gallery, University of Regina) The resulting real and imagined geographies, the material, symbolic, and hierarchically organized spaces of colonial occupation along with the processes that produce them, contextualize enclosure, exclusion, domination, disciplinary control. (Soja, 2005: 37) As a settler colony, the historical development of Canada reflects a will to map, and geography continues to influence on public discourse across the arts and sciences. Confederation (1867), which set the terms for the continued expansion of the Canadian nation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, is connected to a technopolitical ability to imagine and map a social space of unprecedented size and complexity. We might say that the possibility of Canada required and refined cartographic representations that were capable of suturing together disparate territories, terrains, and sociopolitical entities into a contiguous grid of regions and provinces, spanning the North American continent and connecting three oceans. How the map of Canada – the ongoing process of mapping various geopolitical interests – is taken up across academic disciplines and by creative practitioners (visual artists, filmmakers, performers, curators and critics) remains central to debates about present and future of Canada. More particularly, as we discuss in this chapter, different maps and mapping differences are vital to discussions of relations among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. In courtrooms, boardrooms, and classrooms, as well as out on the land the legacy of maps impacts understanding and interpretations of Indigenous sovereignty and self-governance within and across our national borders. As the quote from geographer Edward Soja suggests, colonial geographies continue to ‘contextualize enclosure, exclusion, domination, disciplinary control’ (2005: 37). Whether one approaches the map of Canada through the lens of new economic zones, the imperatives of global warming, or ‘forging a new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and other Canadians’ as the federal government's 2008 ‘Statement of Apology to former students of Indian Residential Schools’ puts it, significant changes to geopolitical contexts require renewed interest in the land and discussions of how it is represented.

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