Western Cartography And Athapaskan Story Maps Summary

212 Words1 Pages
Learning to Drive the Yukon River: Western Cartography and Athapaskan Story Maps by David Neufeld discusses the “frustrations resulting from the necessity of living an eternal compromise” (Neufeld 17) between Northern Athapaskan and Western perception of nature in the form of cartography. Neufeld then presents that “maps have a social purpose: their design and use is not only embedded within the culture creating them, but they reflect and support the social traditions of that culture” (Neufeld 33). He then analyzes a scientifically produced map from “an American military expedition in the 1880s” (Neufeld 25). His findings were that cartographers mapped the land to “produce an empty land, a land of unexploited resources and opportunities” (Neufeld