"Too many Canadians have a quaint notion that Canada was founded by the English and French, with the contributions of Indigenous Peoples little more than a few names like “Manitoba” and some help in the War of 1812. Regardless, for those with knowledge deeper than a puddle, the renaming of lakes, rivers, and lands by the settler state is widely recognized as a colonialist tool used extensively throughout North, Central, and South America. As the famed University of California Berkeley geographer Bernard Nietschmann put it, “More Indigenous territory has been claimed by maps than by guns. And more Indigenous territory can be reclaimed and defended by maps than by guns.” Whether intentional or not, the effect of colonial place names on the Canadian psyche has been to perpetuate the myth that there were vast empty territories, what Europeans called terra nullius, available for the taking. Equally damaging is the belief that Indigenous Peoples were immigrants to North America, like the Europeans after them, and therefore Indigenous ownership over the lands was somehow only temporary until Europeans arrived. These colonial myths remain at the heart of ongoing conflicts over land today." briarpatchmagazine/articles/view/reclaiming-ourselves-by-name
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 20:26:23 +0000