A national reckoning with American history and racial injustice has been playing out across various sites, from monuments to museums, school curricula, and maps, where Indigenous, frontline and marginalized communities are calling to rename (and sometimes reclaim) their current, ancestral, and sacred homelands. Racist and settler-colonial word-monuments are beginning to crack and crumble. But monuments … Read more
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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 the United States, federal lands are stolen lands. When the first European settlers arrived on the shores of North America, moving westward to the Pacific Ocean, there were, by some estimates, upwards of 112 million Indigenous people already living on the continent. Organized into their own rich and diverse societies, Indigenous Nations, bands, and … Read more
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Place names are never neutral—they shape how we understand and inhabit land. Naming is both a tool of colonial power and a site of insurgent resistance. What stories do official names establish or erase, and how can naming be reclaimed to reflect cultural survival, justice, and collective care? Officially called toponyms, place-names are the names … Read more
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Place-names locate us in place, but also in relation to other places, not just across the country, but around the world. Place-names also locate us in time. Indigenous-led renaming campaigns remind us that there are other naming traditions that refer to times before and after colonial rule. They dislodge the sense of inevitability and permanence … Read more
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