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

• Published in: Area
• Main Author: Berger, Antony
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2019
• Subjects: Gros Morne National Park; Newfoundland
• 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

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.”