Words Are Monuments

A national reckoning with American history and racial injustice has been playing out on the terrain of monuments, museums, school curricula, and increasingly -- maps. While the Department of the Interior plans to rename 660 place-names with the derogatory term "sq**w," a new study published in the journal People and Nature shows that misogynist and racist slurs are the tip of the iceberg. Violence in place-names can take many forms, including the erasure of Indigenous knowledge and languages.
 

Titled "Words Are Monuments," the study reveals a system-scale pattern of place-names that perpetuate settler colonial mythologies, including white supremacy. Through a quantitative analysis of 2,200 place-names in 16 National Parks, researchers identified:

• 10 racial slurs

• 52 places named for settlers who committed acts of violence against Indigenous peoples. For example, Mt. Doane, in Yellowstone, and Harney River, in the Everglades, commemorate individuals who led massacres of Indigenous peoples, including women and children.

• 107 natural features that retained traditional Indigenous names, compared with 205 names given by settlers that replaced traditional names found on record.

While the Department of the Interior has established a task force to address derogatory place-names, the agency has faced some criticism for what Washington State officials and area tribes are calling a rushed process, with proposed replacement names that are largely colonial.

Calls to re-Indigenize place-names in national parks and monuments have been gathering steam, from the Blackfeet Nation's recent petition to return traditional names to mountains in Glacier National Park, to the Puyallup Tribe's campaign to rename Mount Rainier to Təqʷuʔməʔ, or Mount Tahoma.
 

A new website and national campaign inspired by these efforts and the place-names study launches today at WordsAreMonuments.org. Created by the pop-up social justice museum The Natural History Museum, the site features an interactive map with stories from problematic place-names cited in the study; a step-by-step guide from the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers on how to officially change place-names; video interviews with cultural geographers and Tribal leaders; and ways to take action to support renaming campaigns.
 

The Natural History Museum will also host a free series of online events featuring Indigenous leaders, artists, activists and scholars that explores:

• Why place names matter and how the movement to 'undo the colonial map' relates to other movements that reckon with American history -- to topple Confederate and colonial monuments, decolonize museums, and overhaul school curricula;

• The relationship between language and ideology, and the power of place names in encoding a way of seeing, understanding, and relating to the land;

• How campaigns to re-Indigenize place names on federal lands are not just about making public lands more inclusive, but are stepping stones on the path to Indigenous co-governance and land rematriation;

• The global reckoning with colonial and imperialist history, including successful and ongoing efforts to replace colonial place-names in New Zealand, India, Palestine, South Africa, and beyond.