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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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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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
Read PostWORDS ARE MONUMENTS is a multi-year public history and socially-engaged art project that brings visibility, context, and support to community efforts to transform the names of streets, neighborhoods, landmarks, and other places across the country. Through essays, videos, panel discussions, virtual exhibits, and public art, Words Are Monuments examines how naming has been used to seize … Read more
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