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?
Read Post
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.
Read Post
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.
Read Post
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
Read PostA national reckoning with US history and racial injustice has been playing out on the terrain of monuments, museums, school curricula, and increasingly—maps. In a new report, “Words Are Monuments,” scientists analyzed 2,200 National Park place-names, asking how place-names perpetuate settler-colonial myths. While the federal government plans to rename 660 place-names with the derogatory term … Read more
Read Post