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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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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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 PostA struggle over history and racial injustice is unfolding on the terrain of monuments, museums, school curricula, and maps. While authoritarians and billionaires move to remake the commemorative landscape in their image and interests, communities are pushing back—rising to reclaim and rename the ancestral, cultural, and political geographies they call home. WORDS ARE MONUMENTS is … Read more
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