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What’s the name of the city, or town, or country that you’re in right now? Do you know where that name comes from? Do you know how long it’s been known by that name, or if it’s had any other names?
Today we’re looking at names across this country – the names of places, people, and individuals – and what truths about our history they reveal or obscure.
This episode Ry Moran talks with Daryl Kootenay, Heather Igloliorte, Lawrence Hill, and Robina Thomas about the deep connections between history, land, and identity.
In this eight-episode series, host Ry Moran (founding Director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation) goes in depth on why the truths of Indigenous Peoples are so often suppressed and why we need truth before reconciliation.
Over course of this season, we visit with Survivors, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, academics, artists, and activists, exploring the opportunities and barriers for truth telling, and ways we can move forward together.
This podcast is presented by the Libraries and Archives of University of Victoria where host Ry Moran is the Associate University Librarian-Reconciliation. It is produced in the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.
Visit www.taapwaywin.ca for transcripts, shownotes and more information.
Ry Moran
So we’re going to start this episode with a little exercise. What’s the name of the city, or town, or country that you’re living in right now? Do you know where that name comes from? Do you know how long it’s been known by that name? Or if it’s had any other names?
To try to deepen our knowledge of the names that surround us, my producer Karina and I took the two parts of the name ‘British Columbia’ – the name of the province in which we both currently live – and researched where exactly this name comes from.
Karina Greenwood
Ok Ry, where does the ‘Columbia’ In British Columbia come from?
Ry Moran
So in order to understand Colombia, we have to go all the way back to Christopher Columbus. Does horrible things. And kickstarts this process of violent colonization of the Americas.
Some years later, the superpowers of the world at the time Britain, France, the United States, Spain – are sending ships all over the world, including to territories here on the west coast of what’s today known as Canada. They’re claiming territories that of course aren’t rightfully theirs.
One of those ships that arrives is called the Columbia Rediviva, which, if my Latin checks out I believe means Columbus reborn. This ship is captained by American Captain, Captain Robert Gray, and he's actually the first European to overwinter on the west side of Canada, in a place that’s today known as Adventure Cove. On his way out, he after having established some relations with Nuu-chah-nulth people, and specifically community members from Opitsaht, he decides to completely destroy the village of Opitsaht. And did it in such a horrific manner, even his own shipmates that we're recording the logs of the ship said that what happened was inappropriate.
So Captain Robert Gray sails out of there, he travels north. He kills a very significant number of people on Haida Gwaii, he kills people on the north end of Vancouver Island, then he sails south and he kills other people in territories now known as the United States, and continues further south, and sails into the mouth of the river now known today as the Columbia River, but then hadn't been named by Europeans.
It was his presence on that river. And the fact that he sailed in on the ship called the ‘Columbus reborn,’ the Columbia Rediviva. That is where that river got its name that we know today, that was named after his ship. Subsequent to that Hudson's Bay Company comes along, sets up an entire district, this concept of Columbia ends up being anchored on maps. And then - as you're going to tell us, we see Britain really begin to expand its control over these territories largely out of fear.
Karina Greenwood
Yes. British Columbia as a name was chosen by Queen Victoria, in a letter on July 24, in 1858. And the British Colonial Secretary Edward Bulwer Lytton had written to her asking her to choose a new name for the province because at some point, it began being called New Caledonia. But that was a name that was being used elsewhere by the French. And so in a letter, it's only a page and a half, four sentences long. And the final sentence reads, “the only name which is given to the whole territory and every map the Queen has consulted as Colombia. But as there exists also a Colombia and South America and the citizens of the Unite d States call their country also Columbia, at least in poetry, British Columbia might be, in the Queen's opinion, the best name.”
But also, the naming of the province was a really integral part of the process that established direct British control over the territory because it wasn't just happening spontaneously on its own. In 1858, there's the discovery of gold in the province, which leads to an influx of immigrants and settlers converging in the region and the British become worried that they're going to lose control over the territory to Americans.
And so they decide that this territory has to come under direct British control. And then on August 2nd 1858, ‘the act to provide for the government of British Columbia’ passes, and it states “whereas divers of Her Majesty's subjects and others have, by the license and consent of Her Majesty resorted unsettled, uncertain, wild and unoccupied territories on the northwest coast of North America, commonly known as the designation of New Caledonia. And from an after the passing of this act to be named British Columbia, it is desirable to make some temporary provision for the civil government of such territories until permanent settlements shall be there upon established and the number of colonists increased.”
So I just think it's so essential that we understand that the name was part of the process of establishing colonial control over this territory - it was not separate - it was such an important way that the British government legitimized its illegitimate claim over stolen land.
Ry Moran
In addition to everything that you've just said, with British control being asserted, you actually see in the colonial record, orders then being sent to then Governor James Douglas here to proclaim British law into force. And he essentially just reads this public declaration out loud one day saying that now British law is in force, which is also a bewildering concept, in many ways, this one two punch that is rooted first, in the necessary belief, not the truth, but the belief that there's no other systems of law in these territories. And then two, just the pulling out of thin air, the exertion or presence of British common law in these territories. And that remains the very foundation and basis of all of our systems in this province and really in this country today.
[music starts]
Ry Moran
This episode we’re looking at names across this country – the names of places, of people, and of individuals – and what truths about our history they reveal or obscure.
We’re talking with Daryl Kootenay about what’s behind so many of the colonial place names in Alberta.
Daryl Kootenay
It really started to paint a clear picture, that the people that came here named these places after themselves.
Ry Moran
And Heather Igloliorte about the Canadian government’s systematic erasure of Inuit names in the 20th century.
Heather Igloliorte
E tag system that lots and lots of people didn't know about, really dehumanizing tag identification system that was imposed upon Inuit for decades.
Ry Moran
Before hearing from Lawrence Hill and Robina Thomas about the deep connections between history and identity.
Lawrence Hill
There was a willful attempt to exterminate a history and a memory and a possibility of even knowing.
Robina Thomas
When you take away our names, and you take away the opportunities to share those stories, you take away all of the responsibility that those names carry as well.
Ry Moran
My name is Ry Moran, this is Taapwaywin: Talking about what we know and what we believe, a podcast from the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən people, and the libraries and archives of the University of Victoria.
[music]
Ry Moran
Many of the names that adorn our much of our landscape are direct markers of the history of settlement and dispossession that created modern Canada.
Daryl Kootenay
In this valley, like just the names, like you're talking about Banff, Canmore, you know, Seebe, Exshaw, Morley, Sibbald. These are all names that are actual places in like Scotland and Europe.
Ry Moran
To better understand the complex history of place names, we talked with Daryl Kootenay, who is an incredible singer, dancer, artist, and speaker that I got to know through our work at the Banff Centre.
Daryl Kootenay
I have my traditional names that were given to me [Iyarhe Nakoda] and [Lakota]. [Iyarhe Nakoda] means 'Dancing Buffalo.' And that was the name that belonged to my great grandpa. And there was a name that carried him through his teen years and that name was transferred to me, I think when I was ten years old, it's been with me ever since. The other name was [Lakota], which is Lakota from my adopted family in Rosebud, South Dakota, they’re Sicangu. And the name translates 'the one that leads with his heart.' So that was a part of a [Lakota] making a relative ceremony with my family.
My English name is Daryl Kootenay, and I'm half Navajo on my late father's side from New Mexico, Dine people, and then born and raised though here in the Rocky Mountains, a part of my late mother's side of the Nakoda people.
Ry Moran
Throughout the Bow Valley in Alberta, there are countless names that bear direct ties to the history of colonization of these lands.
The name Banff for example, is derived from Banffshire, Scotland – the homeland of one of the first directors of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Daryl Kootenay
When I started to understand those names, it really started to paint a clear picture, that the people that came here named these places after themselves, or places that they're familiar to in a different country, in a different continent, or a different land. And that really brings the reality of how much that conqueror and pioneer perspective was being supported but also, you know, it was really being influenced during that time and where were the Indigenous peoples? We were being forced into reservations. We were being forced to do hard labor of clear cutting the way for the CPR railway, you know, clear cutting where these towns are now today, all the ski hills, hiking trails, my community were part of guiding but also the hard, intense labor of making these towns what they are today.
Ry Moran
The act of naming something after a person can be sign of respect and reverence.
But many of the names across this country that currently decorate everything from our streets to our schools unquestioningly honour deeply troubling colonial figures.
Daryl Kootenay
The two names always get me, and I still say it today, is Morley. And Morley is a priest, that was a part of the residential school. And when he passed away, the MacDougall brothers decided to name this place after him, which is now I've grown up saying, I'm from Morley, saying I'm from this priest. And it was just really recently, in the last year or two that we finally changed the name to Mini Thni. And how much has been embedded into me, it's like, I still say I'm from Morley today.
[music]
Ry Moran
The practice of renaming a place denies the existence of Indigenous names – and finding its root in harmful concepts like terra nullius – acts as an extension of the refusal to recognize Indigenous presence and rights.
More broadly, the act of naming things after individuals appears to be seldom represented in the names traditionally assigned by Indigenous peoples.
Daryl Kootenay
And it just, it's still - it's still hitting me, there's all these names in Calgary, in Cochrane, Morley, Banff, Canmore, of people that have played a role in history in some way that was also at the reality of, you know, violations, and, you know, the human rights violations and the, you know, the true essence of how much genocide and this way of marginalization was - was really real, and they were oblivious to it. And that's what - that's what just gets me, because we're human beings and that always gets me on how people can do that while knowing that.
[music]
Ry Moran
Sometimes, these colonial names also take the form of horribly racist terms.
In the Bow Valley, Ha Ling Peak was renamed in 1997, successfully removing its previously racist name. And until 2020, another mountain peak in Canmore area bore a highly racist and misogynistic name for Indigenous women.
Having this kind of language scattered in maps, hiking guides, and blogs, only extends and normalizes violence towards Indigenous women.
But in September of 2020, after persistent campaigning by local judge Jude Daniels and the Stoney Nakoda people, the mountain peak was renamed.
At the ceremony, in the shadow of the mountain, Stoney Nakoda Elder Una Wesley proudly announced:
Una Wesley
Today, I declare that mountain be named Anû Kathâ Îpa. In English, Bald Eagle Peak. [applause]
Ry Moran
Led by Indigenous activists and communities, there has been a steady push across this country to remove both colonial place names and restore Indigenous names.
Daryl Kootenay
Being able to rename it was really, really empowering and seeing our elders spearhead that along with some allies in the valley, you know, really brought a good understanding, in essence of truth and reconciliation, as well.
[music]
Ry Moran
The Indigenous place names that have existed for millennia are important signs of a deep connection to these lands.
Daryl Kootenay
You know, the Bow Valley and Banff and particularly, you know, in our language, we said 'Minhrpa,' And there's many different stories about the place that people know as Banff now, and I've heard the story of 'Minhrpa,' which means 'waterfall' in our language.
But I've also heard community members and elders talk about how it's not just that waterfall, but it's referring to all the other waterfalls that the mountains create, especially during, you know, the springtime when the snow melts, and starts to create the down streams from the tops of the mountains. That whole cycle there is the essence of 'Minhrpa' as well. You know, these cycles, natural law, spiritual law, that we you know, many ways are forgetting.
'Minhrpa' seems to bring that back to life, for me, because what I was told and shared with is that everything that we need to survive was in that valley. Food, shelter, clothing, healing, ways of knowing and believing that the land and the environment and the animal nation takes care of us in that valley.
And I've heard stories about how we were created in the mountains, and that we're the true, genuine people of the mountain. So, that valley symbolizes a spirit that has been prayed to and worshipped the Stoney Nakoda people have been in that valley for quite some time. A lot of the language keepers in our community are just now sharing openly a lot of these places that are significant. So, it's been pretty, pretty interesting for me to hear and see some of my community members bring forth this knowledge, but it's been very empowering for me, because that's knowledge that is just now surfacing, which is very exciting.
[music]
Ry Moran
The Canadian government interfered in different ways at various points in history in the naming of Indigenous peoples.
From the renaming of places, to the forced adoption of Christian names in residential schools - names have been deliberately used as means of supressing Indigenous identity.
To help shed light on the experiences of Inuit, we spoke with Heather Igloliorte about the history surrounding Inuit names.
Heather Igloliorte
Okay. So I'm, I'm Dr. Heather Igloliorte, I'm an Inuk and Newfoundlander from Nunatsiavut. My family's from Hopedale. I grew up in Happy Valley, Goose Bay. And I'm currently at Concordia University where I'm the University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts.
Ry Moran
You know, in this conversation, names are actually kind of right at the heart of truth telling in so many different ways, because we've got these kinship groups, we've got these really tight family relationships, we've got, you know, very important identities, invested in names, and then you've got the government that comes along and takes all those away, then these kind of bumpy processes to sort of untangle ourselves from that. And then of course, this has been, even as Canadians think about, you know, the evolution of Canada itself, even the creation of Nunavut is a big change that has happened really, in the last 30 years, I guess, are so.
Heather Igloliorte
Yeah, it's so wonderful to see all of the reclaiming of Inuit names for Inuit places all across the north. And we've certainly seen a lot of it, there's lots of places that were named after Europeans - even the sort of pre Inuit who lived in on this continent, the Dorset people, they're named after the Earl of Dorset, who was a prince in Europe, who never came to Canada, he wore tights and poofy clothing, you know, could not be any further away from, from what we think of as the Dorset peoples now. And so it's a it is, it's actually so much more appropriate.
You learn a lot about where it is that you are in the north based on the place names and like why things were named the way they are, like Iqaluit, for example, means a place of many fish. Because [Inuktitut] is one fish, [Inuktitut] means many and you're like, ‘Oh, that's a good place to live, there's lots of fish there’ they know like, so there's, there's a lot that you can learn when you start to recover those names and to you know, remove some of the names that are you know, really kind of ridiculous, when you think about it.
Ry Moran
Since colonization of the Arctic began, settlers have shown a profound lack of understanding of the beauty and complexity of Inuit names.
Heather Igloliorte
Before contact with settlers from Europe and elsewhere, Inuit family groups were pretty small, you didn't need to have a second name, you just needed a first name. And those names were really important they were tied to, you know, you were always named after someone. So you had namesakes. And those were really important kinship relationships that were all done through names. And so trying to that that transition period to joining Canada has had all kinds of bumps in the road.
Ry Moran
Heather told us about the e-tag or disk identification system imposed on the Inuit. And because she’s an art historian, we talked about it through the remarkable work of Inuk photographer Barry Pottle.
Heather Igloliorte
Well you know, I think that there's a lot of contemporary Inuit artists who are really invested in sharing their own truths, and their communities’ truths, and their people's truths.
But I think about the exhibition Decolonize me that I curated at the Ottawa art gallery in, was it 2011, a decade ago now. And that show included a series of photographs from Barry Pottle that were all about the e Tag system. And they were really beautiful, because they were photographs of the tags, which were these little leather discs, they had the image of the crown stamped into one side, and then they on the back, they'd have E or W, and then a number for the region, which would mean Eastern or Western Arctic. And then a number for the region. For example, I think five was Baffin Island, and then a dash and then a number for the person. So like you, if you were the 628th person counted, then your number would be, you know, E 5-628.
Ry Moran
Beginning in 1941, the Canadian government issued ID tags with identifying numbers for every Inuk – a decision made without any Inuit consultation and showing a total disregard for Inuit naming practices.i
Heather Igloliorte
And so Barry as a, as a young sort of journalistic photographer, when he started out, he started noticing that people were either wearing the tags, or he'd go to like Inuit cultural events. And he met a woman who had her number written on a t shirt, like she had a t shirt made to show her number. And so he was like, ‘what is what is this going on here with this history,’ because in Labrador we didn't have that we were left out – because we didn't join the Confederation till the 1949. And so, you know, he just became really interested in this history.
And also as an Inuk, was like, ‘I don't know as much about this as I could,’ I think it's so he did this, this project that really tried to unite and focus on people's feelings and their relationship to the tag number. I think it’s a series of 12 photographs. So he asked each of his sitters, each of the Inuits, to think about how they felt about the tags, as they, as they posed for their photograph. And so you really do see a huge range of emotion on people's faces from you know, from anger, and frustration and hurt all the way to kind of a kind of a pride, you know, for having survived that for being resilient for having been known by that.
Ry Moran
Part of the motivation behind this naming program was for the Canadian government to show their ‘effective sovereignty’ over the Arctic and its inhabitants – because by the 1940s, Canadian control of the region had not yet been internationally recognized.ii
Heather Igloliorte
I think that maybe people would be surprised to know that if you go into any museum in the country, and you find an Inuit sculpture that was made in the 50s, or the 60s, maybe even later, it's probably more likely to have the E number carved into the bottom as a signature than it is to have the person's name, which is really just speaks to how prevalent it was. And so that's, that's how widespread it was that people were using it like to sign their name, they really did identify as their numbers, because that's how that's how you would receive any kind of payments from the government. That's how you would enroll your kids in school, that's how you would, you know, that's how you were in the world is like a social insurance number. But instead of a card with your name on it, it was just a number.
[music]
Ry Moran
The e-tag system was discontinued in the early 1970s, but the process of unravelling the legacies of this system continue to this day.
And artists like Barry provide a space to grapple with these complicated histories.
Ry Moran
You know, when you think about your, your curatorial practice, and your work within galleries, and even your scholarly work, how do you see art broadly being in service of or a contributor to or a tool for discussing these really important human rights that have been so infringed?
Heather Igloliorte
I mean, I think there's a lot there's a lot in that question. It's, it's human rights, but it's also kind of the right to dignity, the right to be self-determining to, to really get to share your own story in the way on your own terms, on your own grounds that just, you know, it was kind of taken away from us for a little while. And so it's great that I think of myself as a curator as someone who tries to create a platform for contemporary artists to express themselves and tell whatever stories it is that they want to tell in this sort of in a way that is not mediated by the institution but rather by the artists themselves. So that's really critical to me.
[music]
Ry Moran
To further think through the intersections of history and identify, we talked with acclaimed author Lawrence Hill.
Lawrence Hill
My friends and family members, and students call me Larry, but my name is Lawrence Hill. I live in Hamilton, Ontario. I’m a writer and novelist, essay writer, memoir writer, screenplay writer, now playwright too. I’m Black. My parents were Americans. My father was an African American and my mother was a very engaged and kickass civil rights activist who was white.
Ry Moran
Larry's lineage is interwoven with the civil rights movement.
Lawrence Hill
Because my father, you know, an African American immigrant of Canada who headed up the first human rights commission in the country in Ontario. He told me that I had an obligation when something wrong was going on, if I didn't stand up to oppose it, well, I was part of the problem.
Ry Moran
His most recent book, Beatrice and Croc Harry, is a fantasy children’s story about a young girl who wakes up in a magical forest, with no memory of who she is or how she got there.
Ry Moran
And there's certainly - certainly a lot of parallels between what I saw in your book, and then even what a lot of folks are encountering today in terms of answering some of these fundamental questions such as, who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?
Lawrence Hill
I think most people with a heart, most people who are open, like the thinking about other people, trying to imagine their lives and show some empathy and so forth, are interested in the journey towards self-understanding and identity and whether that identity is quite private, and internalized, or whether it's a public identity that's reinforced by the people around us. And of course, identity is so fluid, and I guess it encompasses both those things and everything in between how we see ourselves, and also how we are seen and accepted as part of communities all around us. And so I'm very interested in kind of - the intersection of geography, and identity too.
[music]
But Beatrice wakes up in the forest and she knows nothing. She has no memory, she doesn't know who she is, she didn't even know her last name, and she didn't even understand, because she's alone with no other human beings, that she's Black. And I guess in that moment her Blackness doesn’t quote unquote “matter,” because it doesn't really kick in with any tangible meaning yet. And I love the idea of giving this child whose had her memory erased through no fault of her own and has been isolated from the entire human world, giving her a chance to reconstruct and refind, reassemble sort of the lost pieces of her identity.
Ry Moran
But as much as this story is fantastical, full of talking crocodiles and rabbits, it is also a touching representation of how colonial violence has prevented whole peoples from being able to know their own history.
Lawrence Hill
And so Beatrice, like so many peoples, Indigenous and Black and others, you know, have to do it, have to make this huge effort, asking herself - this massive effort to correct what has happened to her, and she's on her own. She's got to do this on her own steam and she has no people helping her.
Ry Moran
You know, Larry, there's so many parallels with what we heard through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in so many different ways in regards to that, with you know, these Survivors exiting the residential schools, having been pushed through this system of brutal forced assimilation, and having been renamed, having been numbered as you would a prisoner in a jail essentially. And having this profound just absence of identity other than the one that had been manufactured for them within the schools. And then entering a society, of course, that wasn't really interested in knowing who they were as Indigenous peoples, of course. So this - this process of identity is so central in healing, I think.
And I suppose that's all contributing to maybe changing the idea of Canada and even arresting some of our own amnesia that we have, at the collective level, you know, the sense of knowingness and more importantly, unknowingness that we've all inherited through some form or another.
Lawrence Hill
Yes, there is a collective unknowingness and the collective and I think sometimes, frankly, a willful amnesia, I think many Canadians find it convenient to not know about these things, and they'd rather not know.
And I guess every peoples have profoundly different experiences and different origins. But I often like to meditate on the aspects of similarity of experiences between different peoples. And one really interesting aspect of similarity between, you know, Indigenous peoples and peoples of the African diaspora is that in both cases, there was a willful attempt to exterminate a history and a memory and a possibility of even knowing.
And you've just spoken about this, with regard to in particular, residential schools, which was, of course, one of many ways, they try to stomp out pride and connection to culture, and the proliferation and love of culture and identity - Indigenous identity.
And in the case of people who came, you know, in chains, you know, across the ocean, as enslaved peoples and their descendants, there is also a total and absolute rupture from the past. It is physically impossible to celebrate one's history if you happen to be one of the people who are literally in chains led over the ocean, as you know, quote, unquote, 'first generation' enslaved peoples, because they - they're not allowed to celebrate their past or to cite their prayers, or to speak their names or to have their names.
[music]
But for their descendants, there is also a rupture. And there is also the impossibility of really knowing, feeling, going to the place where your people are from, understanding in any kind of direct way, that history, in that part of yourself.
And so there I think there's a similarity. And I think those things bind us and help us understand each other.
And so the healing is part of the journey towards self-discovery. And so the novel is about the possibilities of healing too.
[music]
Ry Moran
Okay, so Robina if we could just start off with you introducing yourself? If that would be okay.
Robina Thomas
I always struggle ‘how do you introduce yourself?’
Ry Moran
We have, throughout our conversations for this podcast, made a deliberate effort to have all those we visit with introduce themselves. So that they can share the parts of their identity that are important to who they are, and make connections with those past, present, and future.
Robina Thomas
[Introduction in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓]
So I've told you that - I've started off by saying thank you to any elders, chiefs, council members that might be listening, all respected people, to my family and my friends. Thank you so much for listening. I've told you my name is Qwul’sih’yah’maht. My English name is Robina Thomas. I share both my traditional name and my English name with my grandmother, who was Lavina Wyse. And there's a long story behind how Robina and Lavina are a shared name. And my grandmother was the second youngest of Joe and Jenny Wyse from Snuy’ney’muxw. So I've told you that I'm Snuy’ney’muxw and Stó:lō ancestry but I've also told you I'm Lyackson, and I'm Lyackson through marriage. I was married before the Indian Act changed and so I automatically became a member of my husband's band. And I thank the lək̓ʷəŋən and the WSÁNEĆ [hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓], for allowing us to live, learn, and love in their traditional territory, and set hay č xʷ q̓ ə, Thank you all for listening today.
Ry Moran
And there is a relationship between the way Robina introduces herself and the responsibilities of truth-telling.
Robina Thomas
And, you know, my name is Qwul’sih’yah’maht? The root of that name is Qyal'sih'ya and Qyal'sih'ya was my grandmother. And so Qwul’sih’yah’maht, is just tells the difference between my grandmother and me, that 'maht.' And so, that tells a story about where I'm from, from being from Snuy’ney’muxw. And so those words those names, tell a story about who we are and where we from. And when I introduced myself, in my very, very broken hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓. I did that because, when I got my name, my my old, late, Auntie Helen [hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓] from lək̓ʷəŋən territory, told to me, you need to tell people who you are and where you're from.
And I think about, I think about our teachings, and I think about the power of names and words. And the reason I need to tell people is so on this podcast, I've told everyone I'm Qwul’sih’yah’maht. My grandmother was the Lavina Wyse, I'm Lavinia’s granddaughter, and I'm a Lyackson band member. If anyone questions, anything that I've said, they have so many avenues now, to go back and correct that. And that was one of the things about oral tradition. And that's one of the reasons we're told to introduce ourselves.
Ry Moran
Robina also explained the intimate ties between who we are to where we come from.
Robina Thomas
And it's the power of those places. It's telling you my grandfather was oppressed from Stó:lō territory. It's telling you my grandfather, my grandmother is a Wyse from Snuy’ney’muxw territory. It's telling you I'm a Thomas, from Lyackson. There is so many ways for you to find out who I am and where I'm from. There's so many ways to check, if I've, if I've shared any mistruths if I've dropped a name that I shouldn't drop, or if I, you know, said something wrong.
And I think about, I think about the responsibility. And so when you take away our names, and you take away the opportunities to share those stories, you take away with that all of the responsibility that those names carry as well.
[music]
Ry Moran
At the time of our conversation, news had just broken that the provincial government had refused to register the name of a baby, due to the provincial database system being unable to handle Kwak’wala lettering.
Robina Thomas
And, and I just think about how hard that must be when you name a child, and now you can't name them that.
And, and my heart kind of dropped, because we just launched the DRIPA Action Plan two or three weeks ago. We just read about the commitments, on behalf of the province, to the rights of Indigenous people. And you think that a basic right would be to name our children, their names, the rightful names that they have.
And so I celebrated the day that the Action Plan was launched, thinking about the possibility, and then two weeks later, my heart hits the ground, thinking about the roadblocks.
And I thought about that baby. And I thought about how we need to call that baby whatever that name is. And we need to celebrate that name loudly.
Ry Moran
And I think, you know, what was – what has made so clear, when we, when we talk about a story like that is how there are just these two fundamentally different stories still being told in Canada. I mean, there's the story of the colonizers, and then the story of Indigenous peoples. And it seems like the hard and complicated work is one, making the stories of Indigenous peoples more well known, and then two, helping untangle ourselves from these mistruths, that mask understanding of where we live and our responsibilities and the places that we're fortunate to call home.
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Robina Thomas
And you think about Lyackson and, and, you know, trying to rename our island Valdez and there's a creation story that tells us how the Lyackson people came to be. And so by it being called Valdez Island, it completely takes away from our creation story, because, you know, there was a Douglas fir and when it when it fell, it fell onto Lyackson, it didn't fall onto Valdez. And so right away, we have two different stories about how that island came to be and how the Lyackson people came to be. And so there's, it's, it's so important. Words matter, names matter.
Ry Moran
I myself have looked really hard at family names both past and present trying to reassemble who I am as a Métis person, and how my own family fits into to the board histories of colonization and displacement within Canada.
As someone with both settler and Metis ancestry, understanding the interplay between these histories and the responsibilities that come with these realities, I feel, is vital.
For my own family history, I see these names as vital lines of inquiry – questions intended to help answer four fundamental questions so often asked by former Commissioner Murray Sinclair – those questions being – where do I come from? Who am I? Why am I here? And where am I going?
Exploring can Names help us address these questions, and in the case of place names in Canada, exploring these same questions help reveal the complex and often violent processes of colonization.
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Where do the place names of Canada come from, who are they, why are they here, and how does this tie into our collective and shared future?
The direct tie between place names and human rights is a certain part of our future. Legislation in both Canada and here in British Columbia now recognizes the vital link between the transmission of knowledge to future generations and the role names play in this.
In fact the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples clearly states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures,” - and most importantly – “and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places, and persons.“
On the other side of it, states like Canada and provinces, municipalities, are supposed to take the effective measure to ensure that these rights are protected. And to ensure, that all of society has the opportunity to better understand these lands in which we live.
The future of Canada is one wherein Indigenous places names will remerge. This is an exciting future.
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This podcast was created through the direct team work of an incredible group of people. It was written and produced by Karina Greenwood and myself, editing and consulting by Cassidy Villebrun-Buracas, mixing and mastering by Matheus Liete, and music by myself, Ry Moran.
Special thanks to the UVic Libraries team that assisted in countless ways on this production. Additional audio content from CBC News.
Maarsi to our guests Daryl Kootenay, Heather Igloliorte, Lawrence Hill, and Robina Thomas.
Taapwaywin is made possible through the University of Victoria Strategic Framework Impact Fund, and with the direct support from the University of Victoria Libraries and CFUV Radio.
This podcast was created in unceded lək̓ʷəŋən and WSÁNEĆ territories.