All creating, including of East Van as a location, is upon the sovereign Lands, Waters, and Air stewarded by the Stó:lō, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations

mapping east van project

Accessibility: link to timestamped transcript

[cover ID: digitally hand-written light blue-grey text says "MAPPING EAST VAN" above "W/ ECUAD Studio Class" in all caps. The text overlays a photograph with natural light coming from the bottom. A framed print of a Won Kang 2013 drawing is shattered on a light grey tiled floor textured like an ocean, a few big pieces and lots of small shards of glass are all over the floor. The print itself is of the East Van Cross by Ken Lum white neon against a twilight-sky background has silhouettes of an electric pole and cables.]

This is a map of East Van, and in no way is it objective. No map is. Maps are collections for stories of violence. So too, can maps hold tales of resistance, those who know that a story told can never die.

I'm Mickey Morgan, I use they/them pronouns, I'm a cartographer and translator and listener and storyteller. This map we’re making is composed in a matrix of stories shared using various media and is part of a few inter-connected projects like a zine, an open source map, and a podcast, but primarily these are ways to understand mapping as storytelling (and vice versa). This matrixed map is with the ultimate goal to encourage the idea of neighbourly-ness that entails not only basic kindness and respect but also mutual accountability, strengthened relations, and points for resistance and solidarity to flourish.

Thanks to all the folks in the ECUAD studio classmates who were willing to share their stories:

Kieran Muller

Erin Lucey

Carolina De Caija

Brenda Torres

Rebecca Wang

Wenqi Zhao

Randy Cutler

Scott

Stephanie Moscone

Ingrid Koenig

Christina Norberg

Cover image courtesy of Rebecca Wang, print by Won Kang '13

Thank you Andromeda Monk for the music!! Check out her album

Finally, heres the series put out by ECUAD that this is partially in response to with my position as a Programming Research Assistant for the Digital and Creative Knowledge Sharing Series

Some sources:

Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim (language) map with multiple named translators/cartographers squamishatlas.com

access: written place names, translations, and graphic visuals

xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territory map

access: written and drawn, not screenreader accessible

Vines Art Festival list-style map of Indigenous place (Land Acknowledgement) for where the festival took place in 2018

access: written place names, translations, historical photographs

Virtual Museum of Canada page about the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union

access: written descriptions, some images all without descriptive ID