“Part III: Place Names and the War on Woke” examined how renaming functions as an ideological weapon within the so-called “War on Woke,” dividing the public, legitimizing authoritarian control, and reinscribing a nationalist and xenophobic vision of “American Greatness” onto the maps people navigate every day. “Part IV: Reopening the Frontier” shifts focus from what … Read more
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“Part II: Naming American Greatness” surveyed some of the many place name changes ordered or proposed by President Trump during the early phase of his second term. “Part III: Place Names in the War on Woke” turns to the cultural dimensions of this renaming campaign, examining how place-naming functions within the far right’s so-called “War … Read more
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In “Part I: Renaming in Retrospect,” we revisited the origins of Words Are Monuments, exploring the political and cultural debates that informed the project’s launch. “Part II: Naming American Greatness” considers how the stakes of renaming have changed in the past year, surveying some of the Trump Administration’s sweeping efforts to rename sites and landmarks … Read more
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As struggles over history and power play out across monuments, maps, and public memory, the political landscape for place names has undergone a tectonic shift. This four-part blog series, “The New Frontier: Place Names, Power, and Political World-Building,“ explores the changing stakes of place-name campaigns in the United States—what has changed, where we’re heading, and … Read more
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What if we understood the movement to rename places not as a movement to make the settler-colonial world less offensive, but to affirm the enduring presence of the world that settler-colonial place-names have historically served to obscure?
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As the edifice of fortress conservation is giving way, the renaming of Mount Doane in Yellowstone as First People’s Mountain takes on a powerful meaning.
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As the case of Lake Tanaya demonstrates, when we read place-names out of context, they often tell us very little. They sometimes even mislead us. No place-name is neutral.
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Titled “Words Are Monuments”, a new a new scientific study presents findings from a quantitative analysis of National Park place-names. Results show that derogatory place-names are only the tip of the iceberg.
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In this video interview, Lummi elder, organizer, and Master Carver Jewell James explains how place-names and language serve to structure a way of seeing and interacting in the world.
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Within a larger reflection on the logics and limitations of Western Conservation, renaming campaigns function as punctuation marks: driving forward an important conversation about the history and future of our public lands in a time of profound environmental and social change.
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If the monument removals of the past two years have taught us anything, it is that symbolic struggles shape popular consciousness, revealing the collective capacity of the people to set the coordinates through which we navigate space.
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If it’s clear that maps have been central to the twin projects of colonial dispossession and capital accumulation, can they be mobilized in the other direction, not in the interest of accumulation, surveillance, and control, but collective liberation?
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