Mapping Canada as it was ‘before lines were drawn’
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society unveiled its four-volume Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada on Thursday, a two-year labour that offers an unprecedented amount of information about Canada’s First Peoples, their languages and culture, and a history that is both inspiring and tragic.
It is a view of Canada “before the lines were drawn,” in the words of RCGS president John Geiger.
The atlas was created in partnership with the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Métis National Council, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and Indspire.
Alongside the old-school paper atlas is a free app that puts the knowledge in your pocket, including a geo-locator that tells you on which Indigenous nation’s territory you stand and information about what land treaty, if any, applies. Several giant floor maps will travel the country for use in schools and in special exhibits. The society hopes the atlas and its related materials will be a tool that “everyone from prime ministers to kindergarten pupils” can use to understand the complexity of Canada’s Indigenous story.
Geiger met with the Citizen to talk about the atlas on National Aboriginal Day.
Q Can you explain the origin of the project?
A Coming out of the truth and reconciliation process, we as an organization felt it was very, very important to take this seriously. Education is a very important part of the reconciliation process. It really began in an informal talk I had with Carolyn Bennett (minister of CrownIndigenous Relations), who is a great lover of geography and a great lover of maps.
I didn’t at the time have a sense of what it would look like when it was finished — the idea that it would be four volumes instead of one was something that evolved out of the process. But one thing that was clear from the very beginning was that we needed to have Indigenous partners and the content had to be Indigenous-led. This wasn’t the society trying to tell a story on behalf of Indigenous people, this would be a story as told by Indigenous people.
Q How difficult was it to bring all of this information together from such a vast country?
A It’s been an enormously challenging project. Fair to say it’s one of the most ambitious projects we’ve ever taken on as an organization. The depth of the content, the fact that there are various partners participating ... they all have different stories and different experiences.
Q What are you hoping that people who buy the atlas or download the app take away from it?
A I hope this is a foundational document in the reconciliation process ... and that it will be a resource for understanding. This is a magnificent story to tell of the incredible cultures that existed pre-European contact and the depth of these cultures and the beauty of them. I think this book really captures that. It’s going to help people understand why there are issues and help to bring all Canadians around the issue of reconciliation, which is one of the great issues of our time.
Q This project is more than just a book that sits on a shelf, right? A When people think of an atlas, they think of a book, but it’s much more than that. It’s the app. It’s the giant floor maps and the educational resources we offer. We go into schools, young people get on those maps and they take their shoes off and crawl around. There’s all sorts of stories on the map that teachers can go into, whether it’s residential schools or language groups or the differences in Indigenous communities.
Q Was there something in this that you learned that amazed you, that really knocked your socks off ?
A I think it was really just the scale and complexity of the story. It’s not a simple story. It involves various cultures with very different practices. The Métis story is very different from the Inuit story, which is very different from the story of the First Nations. And even amongst First Nations communities, there are great differences culturally. In a way, we started creating an atlas but we really ended up creating an encyclopedia.
The society received its first copies of the atlas just the day before the launch. It will be for sale in bookstores and the usual online bookselling sites for $99. The free IPAC companion app, which also links to the atlas’s website, is available through Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.