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https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.5/people-places-how-place-names-impact-the-way-we-see-landscape>
"Imagine scaling a peak so intimidating that it was called El Capitan, a name
ringing of conquest, conferred by the Mariposa Battalion, an Indian-killing
militia, in the mid-1800s. Imagine the rush of surveying Yosemite Valley from
high atop it. “I wanted to test myself against El Cap,” said Alex Honnold, the
only climber to free solo the 3,000-foot cliff, in an April 2018 TED talk. “It
represented true mastery.”
But another story of El Capitan strikes a different tone. Settler accounts say
that the Southern Sierra Miwuk, for whom Yosemite is home, originally called it
Measuring-Worm Stone. Two brothers were trapped atop it, and only the lowly
inchworm, or measuring worm, could scale the sheer granite cliff to rescue
them. It’s a story about patience, sacrifice, smallness — and, of course,
resilience. The humble inchworm is a far cry from a conquistador mastering a
subjugated peak.
Place names and the stories behind them define how we perceive and connect to
landscape. But we live in a world populated by places named for colonizers:
Libraries, streets and counties across the country bear names like Washington,
Jefferson and Jackson, while “San”s and “Santa”s dot the Southwest, shadowing
California’s coast in missionaries’ cloaks. Can we even see the land underneath
those names, in all its complexities? And what is the impact on the mind —
especially the Indigenous mind — of a lifetime spent repeating colonizers’
names, invoking their stories?"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
