Renaming Mount Doane
Jun 17th, 2022As 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.
Read PostBLOG
Names can be deceiving: on Yosemite’s Lake Tenaya
Apr 12th, 2022As 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.
Read Post
New study reveals system-scale problem of National Park place-names
Apr 6th, 2022Titled “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.
Read Post
Naming and claiming: “you can’t own the Earth”
Apr 6th, 2022In 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.
Read Post
Yellowstone’s 150th Anniversary
Apr 6th, 2022Within 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.
Read Post
Toppling Word-Monuments in Texas and Beyond
Apr 5th, 2022If 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.
Read Post
Counter-Mapping: The Decolonial Atlas Project
Apr 5th, 2022If 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?
Read Post