Thoughts on Place Names on Indigenous Peoples Day

One of the first things Columbus did was rename the places they invaded. Guanahani becomes San Salvador, all soon becoming “New” World. Next thing you know a continent is full of lakes, rivers, mountains, parks, whole regions, named after violent white Christian men.

(One of the very next first things the Columbus crew did upon arriving in the Caribbean on the second voyage was kill black monk seals. Their blubber oil in time literally lubricated the plantation economy. The last sighting of these seals was 1952, and declared extinct in 2008.)

Colonization & genocide begins with distortion — distortion of orientation in time & space, of fact, of the basic interweave of life. Naming helps facilitate all this confusion & control — in the process de-animates a living world. Violence & oppression, being ashamed of itself, requires rebranding. Thus propaganda is necessary for world creation. It both justifies what’s been done and sets the tone for its continuation. So clear-cutting becomes “Healthy Forests” Initiative, murder of unarmed black by police becomes necessary ‘self-defense’, violent insurrection becomes ‘legitimate political discourse’. And thus landscapes carry the names of white men ‘discoverers’ and the devil.

I recently went into a Douglas fir- (named after a Scottish botanist) and redwood- (keehl in Yurok) forested hills, all ancestral Yurok lands, though now Green Diamond Logging Company believes they own all of it. (As evidenced by their intimidating signage, heavily locked gates, and a colonial legal paper fiction backed up by full violence of the State).
The land is heavily scarred from logging & mining. And one can feel it.

I went to an overlook called Devil’s Peak. (Rhetorical question: Why are there countless landscape features across the country named after the devil?)

From here I could see vast swathes of land, including down to the Pacific Ocean, as well as another prominent peak. On maps it is given a particularly obscene racist name, which I won’t use. Fortunately, through Yurok Tribe advocacy, it is being changed to pkwo’o-o-lo’’ue-merkw, which translates to Maple Peak. I was happily surprised that the navigation app on my phone reflected this change.

The area where I live was given the name of a German man, which was carved out of a larger ‘county’ named after a Christian 3-part deity, itself named because they didn’t know the land & mistakenly named the river after the Bay they thought it emptied into, itself ‘claimed’ for King Charles III of Spain, who never set foot on the land, nor felt its wild waters flowing over his regal skin.

My watershed is named after a rich settler during the gold rush, who built a still-standing structure at the center of town, used periodically as protection for white families because of ‘troubles’ between white settlers and indigenous.

All attempted erasures of original place names.

But just as erasure & cultures of death begin with naming, so too can the de-colonial journey & the emergence of cultures of life begin with naming — Naming what is, naming what happened, naming what might be. Resurrecting place names. Naming the context & stories we find ourselves in, & the ones our hearts are living into.

Where I live, a California state park named after a white settler who was also a murderer, has been changed to Sue-Meg, the name of a prominent rock near the site of a historic Yurok village.

All across the the continent, Turtle Island, indigenous place names are being resurrected and honored. Decolonial Atlas has just released a map, the fruit of 9 years of work, a collaborative endeavor involving hundreds of Indigenous elders and language-keepers across the continent to accurately document place names for major cities and historical sites. The Decolonized Turtle Island map, includes nearly 300 names are compiled here, representing about 150 languages.

In the toolbox of technologies, we can include both resurrecting original names the past is asking for & co-creating aligned novel grammars, symbols, images that the future may be calling into existence. And of course, these are part of the deeper process of decolonization including land back, re-matriation, undamming rivers, cultural revitalization, and sacred relationship repair.

All this must be part of the required repertoire as stepping stones across this grand River of the Great Turning.

DOES A LITTLE SPECK REMAIN?

Who has the eyes to see
the feral paw prints
still tracking across your heart
as the world races into the future?

Have all the sharp voices already
drowned out that clarion call
clear as the morning star
pulling up the sun?

Who has the ears to hear
your sagebrush story
of death and rebirth
growing in your gut
as the world rolls on?

Who has the time
for a trickster moon
howling in your bones
as the world floats on by?

Who can feel the warmth
of a juniper bark fire still blazing
beneath your breastbone
as the world turns?

Have all the rough rags
of the routine
already washed you clean
of your magic mountain dust?

Or does a little speck remain?

Does a bright song abide
within the heartbeat
of your delicious desert dawn?

If so, let it be the seed note
of your sacred symphony
sprouting through the concrete
of the world

as it pours itself
along your irrepressible path

 

#ryanvanlenning

LET THE MOUNTAINS CARVE ME

I. SEVERANCE

Commodities, cold machine.

Scandals and plastic and all
the Gottahaves.

Virtually there. The Chase
and The Shining Hamster Wheel.

Too full but empty.

Duller than a balmy day
sharper than a winter gale
this slow and sucking dry.

All the lies will die.

II. THRESHOLD

With wind and water
carry my discourse
up and over

letting the mountain carve
monuments out of me
epiphytic and free.

With river itself take my counsel.

With mud and mushroom heed
the wondrous whispers.

My tail prefers a winding path
and my face found itself
in that ancient blessed lake.

III. RETURN

I’d rather eat beetles,
do you understand?

Once I knocked on the wrong moon
but then hitched with a wild wind

finding that belonging
is not a place,
but a skill
honed with a fierce heart.

I shift shapes from mountain pass to alley way.

What is hidden remains my treasure

what is visible a sword
and flute

an offering
to the woven ones.

And when I say my preposterous names
risible and rooted

Oh how it ripples on and on.

—Ryan Van Lenning

From a new collection, No Lies on the Mountain, forthcoming 2020

All Manner of River

Dedicated to  my buddy Walt.

You bold cedar,
nourished by the river,
the river nourished by you,
fed by and are no less the river.

Your undying roots,
the strength of your limbs
living the athletic purpose of your trunk
saying, “To the sky!”
as much as your lover river says, “To the sea!”

Your needles and the sheen of your needles
you bark and the thickness and hardness of your bark
your manly cones erected skyward
in purpose and pleasure.

Yes, you too enjoy things.

You rocks grey and white, blue-grey
and all manner of red, rose, salmon, crimson
without which you would be incomplete
bringing every bold ray into yourself.

You lichen in manifold delight
gold and orange, all manner of green–
dark green, light green, grey-green, lime green
brown and silver,
and because you long for every hue
you draft yourself the inky absence of color, night black
against your grainy lover rocks.

You wet and soaring river,
your shape, texture, weight,
your undulating curves
and sumptuous taste.

Your prodigious femininity
and smooth fluid shapeliness of your giving in
your belonging to everything
your unbound generosity
your gigantic urge towards your lover sea.

The thousand faces of you:
rippled and roaring,
uncontrolled and uncontrollable,
misted and mysteried,
calm and quiet,
trickled and tranquil.

The flow of you I shall assume
each drop belonging to you
is as good belongs to me.

At the Trailhead

The trailhead can be a magnificent moment. It is a threshold of sorts—the threshold into the unknown. A crossing from one world to another. An excitement and curiosity runs the blood hot regardless of the weather. What beauties and mysteries does the trail hold? How will this rewild me, what aspects of myself will the mountain help me re-member, re-claim?

The threshold also marks our trepidations, our fears, for we know we will be changed by the trail, by the mountain—we will return a different person. With new gifts, new perspectives, yes, but also perhaps new scratches and bruises. The trail may stretch us into a different shape. Truth be told, it is a risk to set off into the unknown. Am I up for climbing this mountain? Is my body capable? Am I prepared? What about my old life, habits, patterns—which of those will the mountain kill off? They may be silly habits and patterns and ways of seeing, but they are my silly habits and patterns and ways of seeing. They are comfortable.

But you cross anyway, because you’re not going for just comfort, but for the Big Life, your Whole Self, because your whole life up to this point has prepared you for the journey. You may not know what is around the next switchback, but you know you will greet it with all you have—you are on the right path. It might not be THEIR path, but it is YOURS. You step from the trailhead onto the trail, with dedicated feet and an eager heart.

SWEET BEAUTY IN THE BREAKDOWN

National Writing Month DAY 29
SWEET BEAUTY IN THE BREAKDOWN
(Word Count: 645)

The mountain is calling me. It is calling me naked into the exposed light, where the vast heat beckons me to crack like scorched soil ready to receive.

I myself must be empty of everything first—Empty of food, empty of distraction, empty of ego, empty of story.

Something in me gives assent. Ok—I’ll dive into the Great Inyo Sea, my name for this strange hybrid mountain-high desert-ocean labyrinth. Ok—I’ll stretch myself from horizon to horizon, until my soul image pops out in high relief, like shards of obsidian from the dry earth floor.

Somehow I already know: all the worlds to which I don’t belong will die in this high desert. I know I will leave them as offerings to the land.

The cracking begins. The mud lake. The mud at the bottom of my being. The shell of my false identities. My fortressed heart.

Oh it hurts—what gorgeous pain is this?

Oh, why is there such sweet beauty in the breakdown?

(Vulnerable Mountain Heart)
————————————————
For #NaNoWriMo2018, we (Katie and Ryan @wildnatureheart) are each writing our memoirs, our Wild Nature Heart stories so-to-speak, sharing a glimpse of our progress throughout November. We really believe what the organization says: the world needs your story! Everyone has a story to tell—What’s your Wild Nature Heart? We look forward to sharing this journey of vulnerability and self-discovery.
Ryan and Katie
#mywildnatureheartsto