Mapping

Anthropologist Hugh Brody lived among the Beaver Indians, the Dunne-za and Cree peoples, forest hunters of the Canadian sub-Arctic.[i] He noted how European map-makers had left their territory mostly a blank, yet even without the art of cartography, the indigenous people filled the land with names and stories, knowledge of hunting grounds, distances, migration routes, seasonal changes and much more.

David Lewis notes ‘When an Aboriginal depicts a stretch of country he generally incorporates its mythical with its physical features, so stressing the inseparable interrelation between the two. Such paintings cannot be interpreted without inside knowledge, yet their emphasis on the spiritual attributes of place make them doubly memorable to the initiated.’ [ii] See the poem ‘Groundwork’ from South Australia.

David Turnbull states what is overlooked: "The mapmaker determines what is, and equally important, what is not included in the representation. This is the first important sense in which maps are conventional. What is on the map is determined not simply by what is in the environment, but also by the human agent that produced it."[iii] This is a matter of politics and power, as Turnbull goes on to show: “Documents, texts, diagrams, lists, maps (discourses in general) embody power in a variety of ways. Discourses get the agenda of what kind of questions can be asked, what kind of answers are possible, and equally what kind of questions and answers are impossible within that particular discourse or text.” (Turnbull, 1993: 54)

Doug Aberley takes this further: “If you were entirely cynical, you could view the appropriation of mapping from common understanding as just another police action designed to assist the process of homogenizing 5,000 human cultures into one malleable and docile market. As a collective entity we have lost our languages, have forgotten our songs and legends, and now cannot even conceive of the space that makes up that most fundamental aspect of life - home.”[iv]

Do we need maps? Alston Chase is worried that environmentalists lose touch with the ground when they become interested in eco-philosophy, green politics or acid rain. The actual destruction of habitat, the actual defilement of ecological processes is not seen, noticed, or experienced except by knowing place.[v] But let us all be artists and pragmatists, at the same time: "All maps can be related to experience, and instead of rating accuracy or scienticity we should consider their workability - how successful are they in achieving the aims for which they are drawn - and what is their range of application.” (Turbull, 1993:42)

How about good old fashioned (pre-Ptolemy) chorographic map making? Combining a distant cartographical birds-eye view with close ups of mysteries and amazements, miniature narratives, images. Map making as art, just as some paintings in the Papunya tradition (very old & very young) are best seen as maps with cultural, mythic, topographic and narrative elements. William Gilpin worried that one view: “was too extensive for the painter’s use . . . It is certainly an error in landscape-painting, to comprehend too much. It turns a picture into a map.”[vi] but we now have photography – from satellite imagery to macro focus – from the Hubble to scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM).

[i] Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1981.

[ii] David Lewis ‘The way of the nomad’, in From earlier fleets: Hemisphere – an Aboriginal anthology, 1978 p79

[iii] David Turnbull, Maps are Territories, Science is an Atlas, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p5.

[iv] Doug Aberley, Boundaries of Home, Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1993, p2-3.

[v] Alston Chase, ‘Playing God in Yellowstone: the destruction of America’s first national Park’, Atlantic Monthly, 1986.

[vi] Observations relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the year 1772 – 3rd edition, 1792, p153-4) -

Mappa Mundi

by Richard of Haldingham circa 1285, Hereford Cathedral

Hungover but vigilant, I anticipate adventures

loose within a vellum relic the tint of faded ivory.

The script interrogates an inheritance nourished

by rain and bodily fluids pouring through an amniotic sea

A path unravels the labyrinth of Knossos,

a defused situation.

The world makes more appearances: Babylon howls

over Babel, an implacable native hung like a rhino

steals from the bestiaries and film noir. Near Glasgow

a Norseman skis past a pair of cannibals doing lunch.

Has the heart allegiance to Anaximander?

Jerusalem's dead centre.

Dick made mistakes but added Edward's recent victories

armies need maps to unfold scarred borderlands.

The brain conspires to map the heavens, map

underground ground and its own unconscious palimpsest.

But light has no map, happiness no map

my life has no map.

Hailstones clatter onto a May fair relentlessly English

business is slow, I'm on my way. Columbus was wrong,

the court experts right but in a week I'll surface behind

my past, so close to Asia I’ll snap Mercator’s projection.

Cartographers found dragons to gesture my destination.

How could I get here?

[i] Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1981.

[ii] David Lewis ‘The way of the nomad’, in From earlier fleets: Hemisphere – an Aboriginal anthology, 1978 p79

[iii] Observations relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the year 1772 – 3rd edition, 1792, p153-4) -

[iv] Alston Chase, ‘Playing God in Yellowstone: the destruction of America’s first national Park’, Atlantic Monthly, 1986.