Lorem Ipsum è un testo segnaposto utilizzato nel settore della tipografia e della stampa. Lorem Ipsum è considerato il testo segnaposto standard sin dal sedicesimo secolo, quando un anonimo tipografo prese una cassetta di caratteri e li assemblò per preparare un testo campione. È sopravvissuto non solo a più di cinque secoli, ma anche al passaggio alla videoimpaginazione, pervenendoci sostanzialmente inalterato. Fu reso popolare, negli anni ’60, con la diffusione dei fogli di caratteri trasferibili “Letraset”, che contenevano passaggi del Lorem Ipsum, e più recentemente da software di impaginazione come Aldus PageMaker, che includeva versioni del Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum è un testo segnaposto utilizzato nel settore della tipografia e della stampa. Lorem Ipsum è considerato il testo segnaposto standard sin dal sedicesimo secolo, quando un anonimo tipografo prese una cassetta di caratteri e li assemblò per preparare un testo campione. È sopravvissuto non solo a più di cinque secoli, ma anche al passaggio alla videoimpaginazione, pervenendoci sostanzialmente inalterato. Fu reso popolare, negli anni ’60, con la diffusione dei fogli di caratteri trasferibili “Letraset”, che contenevano passaggi del Lorem Ipsum, e più recentemente da software di impaginazione come Aldus PageMaker, che includeva versioni del Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum è un testo segnaposto utilizzato nel settore della tipografia e della stampa. Lorem Ipsum è considerato il testo segnaposto standard sin dal sedicesimo secolo, quando un anonimo tipografo prese una cassetta di caratteri e li assemblò per preparare un testo campione. È sopravvissuto non solo a più di cinque secoli, ma anche al passaggio alla videoimpaginazione, pervenendoci sostanzialmente inalterato. Fu reso popolare, negli anni ’60, con la diffusione dei fogli di caratteri trasferibili “Letraset”, che contenevano passaggi del Lorem Ipsum, e più recentemente da software di impaginazione come Aldus PageMaker, che includeva versioni del Lorem Ipsum.

Bill Pickett Hill

Racial Justice

1 of 17 place names in Texas approved by the US BGN in 2021 to replace names containing “Negro”, most of which prior to 1966 contained “N____.” Bill Pickett (1870-1932) was a cowboy, performing in rodeos, fairs and wild west shows. He was the first Black honoree in the National Rodeo Hall of Fame. He was the son of formerly enslaved individuals.

Bill Pullman Hill in Texas is still identified by it’s former name on Google Maps. Image: Google © 2022, CAPCOG, Landsat / Copernicus, Maxar Technologies, USDA Farm Services Agency

Roadside Ruin

Canyonlands National Park

Anti-indigenous beliefs

Ruin is defined as “the physical destruction or disintegration of something or the state of disintegrating or being destroyed.” This abandoned, ancestral Puebloan site is within view of the paved road, hence the name. Use of “ruin” perpetuates the myth that Indigenous people are not here anymore. Modern Puebloan peoples consider such sites occupied by ancestors’ spirits.

Image: Joe Shlabotnik (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 / flickr)

Mt. Scott and Scott Bluffs

Crater Lake National Park

Violence

Levi Scott was a US Captain in the Cayuse War, which occurred in 1847-1855 in the northwestern US between the Cayuse people of the region and the US Government (and local settlers), ending with the defeat of the Cayuse and removal to reservations.

Image: James St John (CC BY 2.0 / flickr)

Hillman Peak

Crater Lake National Park

Violence

Named after John Wesley Hillman; who fought in the Rogue River Wars between the U.S. Army, settler militias and volunteers, and the Native American tribes of the Rogue River Valley area of what today is southern Oregon. Natives not killed in the war were removed to reservations to clear the land for settlers and prospectors.

Photo by docentjoyce (CC BY 2.0 / flickr)

Nordensköld Site #16

Mesa Verde National Park

Violence

Ancestral Puebloan site named for archaeologist who stole artifacts and destroyed culturally significant sites.

Image: gjhikes.com

Wuqti Akwukłi'it

(Fisher Mountain in Kootenai)

Pinchot Creek

Glacier National Park

Anti-indigenous beliefs

Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) was the first head of the US Forest Service and a leading conservationist of his age, was a delegate to the first and second International Eugenics Congress, in 1912 and 1921, and a member of the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society, from 1925 to 1935.

Image: Google © 2022 CNES / Airbus, Landsat / Copernicus, Maxar Technologies, USDA Farm Service Agency

təqʷuʔməʔ

(pronounced "Tahoma" or "Tacoma") Mother of all waters in Twulshootseed language

Mount Ranier

Mount Ranier National Park

Erasure of Knowledge

təqʷuʔməʔ is the name used for many generations before settlers arrived by the tribes now found around the Pugett Sound and Yakima areas. Rainier is the name British explorer Capt. George Vancouver gave the mountain in 1792, for Peter Rainier – an admiral in the British navy who fought against the US in the Revolutionary War.

Image: Bernd Thaller (CC BY 2.0 / flickr)

Black Elk Peak

Black Elk Wilderness Area

Indigenous soveriegnty

This site is the Black Hills sacred to the Lakota people. Named for Nicholas Black Elk, Oglala Lakota visionary and healer who lived from 1863-1950, fought with Crazy Horse in the Battle of the Greasy Grass (Battle of the Little Bighorn) and survived the Wounded Knee massacre. See book Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt. Renaming led by Oglala Lakota elder, Basil Brave Heart. The former name was for Col. William S. Harney who led a massacre of 86 Brulé Lakota including women and children in 1855, among other acts of personal and military violence in his lifetime.

Image: Ken Lane (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 / flickr)

Kwiłwum Akanuxunik

(big belly man in Kootenai - referring to the giant who made a trail through this area and did not feel the sting of arrows)

Dutch Lake

Glacier National Park

Erasure of Knowledge

Named for “Dutch” Louie Meyer, an early prospector in the Glacier area.

Image: Google © 2022, CAPCOG, Landsat / Copernicus, Maxar Technologies, USDA Farm Services Agency

Mt. Sheridan

Yellowstone National Park

Violence

Named in honor of General Philip H. Sheridan, U.S. Army, one of the early protectors of the park. During Reconstruction he defended black people, but after the Civil War he was effectively in charge of clearing Indigenous people out of the plains to make way for settlers. During the Indian Wars he killed Indigenous people and promoted exterminating the buffalo.

Image: Greg Willis (CC BY-SA 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Niuoxkai-itahtai

(three streams in Blackfoot)

Hudson Bay Creek

Glacier National Park

Violence

At the Triple Divide Peak the water splits into three watersheds, the Pacific, Atlantic and Hudson Bay, with Hudson Bay Creek heading for the Hudson Bay. Named after the Bay, which was named for Henry Hudson, an English explorer of northern North America, who had several interactions with First Nations, including sacking a settlement in Nova Scotia in 1609.

Hudson Bay Creek visisble on left side, Image: ablertascrambler (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 / flickr)

Salt Flat and Wooden Shoe Canyon

Yellowstone National Park

Derogatory

Native-led efforts to remove the word “sq***” from geographic names have been ongoing for decades, with several states passing legislation banning the use of what is widely recognized as a racist and sexist slur against Indigenous women, dating from the colonial era. In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) formally declared “sq***” a derogatory term and ordered its removal from more than 650 federal sites. Following a consultation process with more than 70 tribes across the country, Sq*** Flat and Sq*** Canyon were renamed Salt Flat and Wooden Shoe Canyon in 2022.

Sq*** Canyon, Image: Andrew_Wojtanik / liveandlethike.com

Mt. Churchill

Wrangell St. Elias National Park

Violence

The mountain was named in 1965 by the Alaska State Legislature for Winston Churchill, who perpetrated famine in India.

University Range, Mt Bona and Mt Churchill, Russell Glacier, Image: Carl Donohue / expeditionsalaska.com

Cardenas Butte

Grand Canyon National Park

Violence

Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas is often remembered for being the first non-Native American to see the Grand Canyon, but Cardenas, a captain in the Coronodo expedition, was the only member of the Coronado expedition to be punished back in Spain for his cruelties to and murdering of numerous Native Americans.

Image: Bernard Spragg

Leehameti

(Mock Orange place in Miwok)

Indian Canyon Creek

Yosemite National Psrk

Erasure of Knowledge

The canyon is known by the Miwok as leehameti meaning “mock orange place” for its Mock Orange (Philadelphus lewisii) bushes they use to make arrows. Two of Ahwahneechee Chief Tenaya’s three sons ran up this canyon to escape their captors, the Mariposa Battalion whose mission in 1851 was to clear the Yosemite Valley of Native Americans to make way for the gold rush. The third son was shot dead trying to escape. This escape is how the canyon got its US name.

Gardners Hole

Yellowstone National Park

Violence

Gardner, who was a fur trapper, named the hole after himself. Gardner and his crew scalped and burned alive three Arikara men he presumed guilty for killing three trappers.

Buffalo Nations Valley

Hayden Valley

Yellowstone National Park

Anti-indigenous beliefs

The sovereign Tribal Nations of Yellowstone formally requested the Yellowstone Superintendent to support changing this to Buffalo Nations Valley. Ferdinand Hayden was a geologist who led the first federally funded geological survey of Yellowstone in 1871. His report was essential in persuading Congress to establish the national park. His report also called for the forced assimilation or, failing that, extermination of Native Americans. Other writings of his also demonstrate his white supremacist worldview, used by settler colonizers to justify dispossessing Native Americans from their lands.

First Peoples Mountain

Yellowstone National Park

Violence

On January 6, 1870, Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane (1840–1892) led his company of US soldiers, under the command of Major Eugene Baker, to massacre Chief Heavy Runner’s Piikani encampment on the Bear (Marias) River in north central Montana. Doane and his men murdered 173 Piikani people that day, mainly women, children, and the elderly. Doane bragged that the massacre was the “greatest slaughter of Indians ever made by U.S. troops.” Later that year, Doane provided the military escort for Ferdinand Hayden’s survey of what is now called Yellowstone National Park, and Hayden named this mountain after Doane.

In 2017, the sovereign Tribal Nations of Yellowstone formally requested the Yellowstone Superintendent to support changing the name from Mount Duane to First Peoples Mountain. In 2019, the Wyoming Board of Geographic Names voted 6–2 to recommend stripping Doane’s name, and in 2022 the name was officially changed after the US Board on Geographic Names voted 15–0 to rename it First Peoples Mountain.

Image: First People’s Mountain, Mt. Stevenson and Mt. Langford.

Bear Lodge

(Mahto Tipila in Lakota)

Devils Tower

Devils Tower National Monument

Derogatory

This iconic Black Hills site is sacred to the Great Sioux Nation (Oceti Sakowin, Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples) and the name suggests that Native religious rituals conducted there are forms of devil worship. The effort to change this name is led by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, spiritual leader of the Great Sioux Nation.

A NATIONAL RECKONING WITH AMERICAN HISTORY AND RACIAL INJUSTICE HAS BEEN PLAYING OUT ON THE TERRAIN OF MONUMENTS, MUSEUMS, SCHOOL CURRICULA, AND INCREASINGLY—MAPS.

A struggle over history and racial injustice is unfolding on the terrain of monuments, museums, school curricula, and maps. While authoritarians and oligarchs move to remake the commemorative landscape in their image and interests, communities are pushing back—rising to reclaim and rename the ancestral, cultural, and political geographies they call home.

WORDS ARE MONUMENTS is a multi-year educational and socially-engaged art initiative that supports grassroots efforts to restore or reimagine the names of historic and sacred places. It explores how naming has been used to seize land and erase worlds—and how it can be mobilized as a tool for resistance, cultural resurgence, and collective repair. 

Words Are Monuments is a multi-year
educational and socially-engaged art initiative
that explores how naming has been used to seize land and erase worlds—and how it can be mobilized as a tool for resistance, cultural resurgence, and collective repair.

PRECEDENTS + GLOBAL CONTEXT
In the aftermath of Apartheid, South Africa became the site of widespread renaming campaigns, where people worked together to abolish the traces of colonial rule in the official names of streets, neighborhoods and cities. There is a correlation between place-names and the power of the people to produce them, and what they signify in terms of a new order.
PRECEDENTS + GLOBAL CONTEXT
In New Zealand, the Māori Party has submitted a petition to change the country’s official name to Aotearoa, its name in the Te Reo Māori language, and to restore the original names for all towns, cities and places across the country. Indigenous struggles for self-determination are also struggles to undo the colonial map, to expose and organize around a world that the colonizers could not destroy.
Here's a map of New Zealand with place names like Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Christchurch... Here's a new map of Aotearoa with place names like Tamaki Makau-Rau, Kirikiriroa, Ngamotu, Otautahi...
Words Are Monuments
Words Are Monuments