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“We were trying to aim at those folks who were interested in questions of ecology and conservation but didn’t know how to deal with these questions about racism and settler colonialism, how to think about what that might mean in terms of place names and parks.”

Cultural geographer and ethnic studies professor Natchee Blu Barnd discusses “Words Are Monuments,” a quantitative analysis of 2,000 National Park place-names categorized according to various forms of settler-colonial violence.

More info: http://WordsAreMonuments.org

“The place names you see on a visitor map aren’t just meaningless. They hold power and they tell a story. What stories are they telling? Are they stories that represent justice or do they represent oppression?”

Ecologist Bonnie McGill, PhD, discusses “Words Are Monuments,” a quantitative analysis of 2,000 National Park place-names categorized according to various forms of settler-colonial violence.

More info: http://WordsAreMonuments.org

“We talk about colonial powers coming in and renaming the world around us. It’s like cutting a ribbon. It’s an attempt to destroy your relationship with that place, that power that’s there. It’s part of that genocidal policy, to destroy who we are within. Because who we are inside reflects how we relate to earth outside. And if you have a belief system where the earth deserves to be respected, it structures the way you think and you feel.”

Lummi Nation elder, organizers, and Master Carver Jewell James discusses how place-names and language serve to structure a way of relating to the world around us.

More info: http://WordsAreMonuments.org

In July 2021, the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation transported a 25-foot totem pole from Washington State to Washington DC, stopping at sacred and historic places under threat from dams, climate change, and resource extraction. As the pole traveled, it drew lines of connection — honoring, uniting and empowering communities working to protect sacred places. It carried the spirit of the lands it visited and the power and prayers of communities along the way — ultimately delivering these prayers, power and demands to the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress in Washington DC, and culminating in an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

More information: http://redroadtodc.org

This video profiles the activist science of the Watershed Institute, produced in the context of the 2018 exhibition Kwel’ Hoy: Many Struggles, One Front.

Developed by The Natural History Museum with the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation, Ramapough Lenape Nation, Watershed Institute, Princeton Environmental Institute and Center for the Humanities at CUNY Graduate Center, the exhibition connected the Watershed Institute’s efforts to protect the local watershed from the proposed PennEast Pipeline to the nearby Ramapough Lenape Nation’s struggle to stop the Pilgrim Pipeline, and the Lummi’s struggles to protect the waters of the Pacific Northwest from oil tankers and pipelines.

More information: https://thenaturalhistorymuseum.org/events/kwel-hoy-many-struggles-one-front/