Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, was never “storyless,” despite UNESCO label

Vannini and Vannini ( AREA 2019, 1–10) criticise UNESCO for identifying Gros Morne National Park as a Natural World Heritage site because that label implies an absence of human relations and social life: it is a “storyless space.” Far from being without stories, both human and geological, the area f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Area
Main Author: Berger, Antony
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/area.12589
https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Farea.12589
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/area.12589
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/area.12589
https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/area.12589
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Summary:Vannini and Vannini ( AREA 2019, 1–10) criticise UNESCO for identifying Gros Morne National Park as a Natural World Heritage site because that label implies an absence of human relations and social life: it is a “storyless space.” Far from being without stories, both human and geological, the area full of the tales of past visitors, including indigenous peoples who left their artefacts to tell their stories, and settlers over two centuries whose lives have been recorded in many publications and repeated in local gatherings today. I challenge the notion that UNESCO's label in any way renders these stories as “irrelevant and silent.”