Overview Of Maps And Dreams By Hugh Brody

Maps and dreams written by Hugh Brody follows his eighteen-month long journey spent with the Athapaskan Indigenous peoples in Northeastern British Columbia. The land- use and occupancy study is a combination of oral history and accounts of European explorers, in an attempt to understand the economic systems of Indigenous peoples based on hunting and trapping. The odd numbered chapters follow a small group of people known as the Beaver people, who were asked to create maps of their trapping and hunting grounds. The even numbered chapters report on the economic boom of the northern frontier and the influence it had on Indigenous groups. The book begins with European ideas about the North that have contributed to the negative stereotypes of hunting

The white man’s dream is of new energy sources and industrial development however, the maps that the Indigenous peoples create of their territory gets in the way of this (Brody, 1981, p. 30). Indigenous groups have lost a lot of land that was once the center of their hunting and trapping systems due to the ignorance of settlers and developers of First Nations economic and cultural

Joseph Patsah and his family and friends were verbally narrated by the author in the odd chapters and the authors research results and account of historical events are represented in the even chapters. Hugh Brody the researcher was accepted into the community as an outsider and experienced hunting trips, a funeral, a trip to Fort St. John, and experienced their way of life that relied on the hunting and trapping seasons. Joseph Patsah informs Brody about his Reserves fears of industrial development in their hunting and trapping lands. Joseph also discusses sport hunters and their intrusion on First Nations land as they would often wound animals abusing the opportunity to make use of the whole animal (Brody, 1981, p.