Book Reviews
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BOOK REVIEWS Living Proof: The Essential asserts a methodological standard Data-Collection Guide for against which use and occupancy maps can be evaluated. Indigenous Use-and-Occupancy Living Proof is a massive book. Its Map Surveys large-format pages display effectively Terry Tobias more than 70 f ul l-colour maps and dozens of tables and figures. Vancouver: Union of BC Indian The language used in the book Chiefs and Ecotrust Canada, 2009. is straightforward. The jargon of 486 pp. $100.00 cloth/$50.00 paper. cartography, geography, and social science research is defined clearly, Thomas McIlwraith often with the aid of tables and figures. Douglas College The advantages and disadvantages of project design decisions, such as o maps speak for themselves? paying high honoraria or using group DTerry Tobias insists that interviews are, for example, presented indigenous land use and occupancy in tabular form. The readable style and maps must speak loudly and clearly, and the pairing of text and tables offset he demonstrates that they can if rigorous the physically intimidating size of the research and methodological standards volume. The result is a handbook that are followed. Tobias explains this in is accessible to readers with different Living Proof, a spectacular handbook backgrounds and levels of research that lays out an effective process for the experience. The scale of production is production of thematic maps detailing enormous, too. The book took most indigenous uses of the land. In it, of ten years to research and write. It Tobias notes that indigenous groups includes extensive quotations about throughout Canada and elsewhere are best mapping and research practices producing land-use maps as central from more than 120 practitioners of components of their negotiations with use and occupancy mapping. Tobias’s governments and industrial developers. inclusion of the voices of indigenous His goal is to establish a process for people, academics, consultants, and generating the data with which these government representatives in the text maps are created. In doing so, Tobias gives readers the opportunity to hear bc studies, no. 169, Spring 2011 143 144 bc studies directly from the people with expertise presents conventions for coding the in preparation and use of land use maps. data on maps. Several figures, complete Living Proof is directed largely at with “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” indigenous communities and their icons, contrast effective and problematic researchers. It emphasizes the creation techniques for marking maps with of map biographies – maps generated point, line, and polygon data. The from interviews with indigenous chapter offers a strategy for conducting participants that depict land use and a map-centred interview. And it occupancy for specified time periods includes more than 20 coloured maps and locations – as the central thematic showing examples of good and poor maps in a community’s cartographic use of map symbols. It is incredibly collection. The book begins with an detailed and leaves little room for extended example of a mapping project variation in style, which reflects Tobias’s in the Tseil-Waututh indigenous message: standardized methods for community of Greater Vancouver. It is the preparation and presentation of written in part by Chief Leah George- land-use maps improve the likelihood Wilson and illustrates her community’s that the maps will be understood. experience of using Tobias’s methods The volume does provoke questions from inception through to design of audience for these maps. The and on to final map production. Each implied audiences are governments subsequent chapter of Living Proof and industrial developers – those groups demonstrates a different part of the with whom indigenous communities mapping process. Included first are seek dialogue through maps. While general observations about using and good maps do speak for themselves, reading map biographies. The heart of the messages they impart may be the book consists of lesson-like accounts interpreted differently by different of the techniques for eliciting data audiences. Indigenous cartographers that can be plotted on maps. Tobias may identify and emphasize the places discusses, for example, managing where moose were killed on kill maps, projects and designing interview for instance, but such maps also show questionnaires. He delves into minutiae, where moose have not been killed – such as the importance of choosing the should developers choose to read them right nib size for a mapping pen. While that way. The standards established by anachronistic to current computer- Living Proof limit misinterpretations assisted map-makers, mapping pens by enabling recipients of these maps to are necessary for producing working see clearly their value and limitations. maps in the field. And tips related Map-based consultations will be to cartography, such as reading map improved if both cartographers and scales or understanding contour lines, map readers use this manual. are scattered throughout. Examples of Living Proof is informed by academics, map-biography projects are numerous. consultants, and the principles of good They come from community mapping social science research. It emphasizes projects from across Canada and one careful data collection and leaves the chapter is devoted to an Australian production of maps to cartographers example. and technicians. It sets a high standard Chapter 12 “Recording Spatial for the research central to generating Data,” exemplifies Tobias’s style and the information plotted on use and Living Proof ’s perspective. This chapter occupancy maps, and is a reference Book Reviews 145 that will be used by community-based now thought possible. The company’s researchers and academics with an subsequent rebirth was to be phased interest in indigenous land use into in over five years so that, by 2003, the future. I expect that governments implementation would be complete. and courts will pay attention to it, too, Forestry and Biodiversity documents as they seek criteria for evaluating the the learning process undertaken by aboriginal rights and title arguments MacBlo employees, commissioned which can stem from map biographies. researchers, and hired contractors to Do maps speak? Good maps do. solve a complex, “wicked” problem – If the methods and standards set by how does a for-profit company sustain Tobias in Living Proof are followed, use biological diversity in a managed and occupancy maps will speak loudly coastal temperate rainforest? Its authors and clearly, and be listened to. argue that the answer was a two- pronged approach that included forest- zoning and variable retention logging, both informed by adaptive ecosystem Forestry and Biodiversity: management. They proposed that Learning How to Sustain if select, representative areas were reserved from logging, then the forest Biodiversity in Managed Forests patches would act as lifeboats. After Edited by Fred L. Bunnell and logging, the adjacent cutblock could be Glen B. Dunsworth recolonized by species in the reserved habitat, whether or not those species Vancouver: ubc Press, 2009. 374 pp. were known to, or understood by, $39.95 paper. science. This book is a highly structured, David Brownstein very complicated case study, and it is University of British Columbia certainly not an easy introduction to either adaptive management or coastal “ o more clear-cuts ! ” S o ecology. Most readers will want to announced MacMillan Bloedel approach it as a reference volume – Nceo Tom Stephens in a dramatic something to sample rather than to 1998 policy shift. The gap between consume from beginning to end – an global social expectations and the approach greatly facilitated by the many firm’s perceived destructive logging section signs that point elsewhere in the practices, primarily the accusation text to related passages. It should be of that it over-harvested pristine old- great interest to advanced students of growth forests, had prompted waves biodiversity conservation as well as to of international protest. Pressure local forest managers and policy-makers from the company’s own customers (and their critics). The lucid, highly meant that business as usual was no condensed chapter summaries act as longer possible. In response, company an intelligible mental gathering point, management convened six teams and an antidote to the often highly complex gave them ninety days to address sections that they summarize. different aspects of the question of Forestry and Biodiversity is divided whether or not the company could into three unequal parts, with stop clear-cutting and still make a contributions from six authors, most profit. Previous impossibilities were variously linked to the University of 146 bc studies British Columbia’s forestry school. During the project’s first six Part 1, the comparatively short years, this enormous forest tenure “Introduction,” has four contextual was sold and resold by four different chapters. These include a description companies. With each change in of the resource management problem, ownership, personnel within the the 1.1-million-hectare empirical case company also changed. The authors study, and two chapters on the adaptive confide that lack of corporate continuity management approach employed. was partially responsible for some Part 2, “The Indicators,” has seven failings in attaining the goals of the challenging chapters that consider adaptive management program (240). the three major indicators of success Government also hindered