4. Part 2: What’s up with names in our community?

Resources:

First Nations student honoured as McGill valedictorian after leading fight against 'Redmen' team name -CBC, Ka’nhehsí:io Deer

The Untold History of Mount Rushmore: A KKK Sympathizer Built Monument on Sacred Lakota Land -Democracy Now, Amy Goodman

A Native Nations Perspective on the War of 1812- PBS, Daivd Fixico

Riel, Louis “David” (1844–85) - Indigenous Saskatchewan Encyclopedia, Darren R. Préfontaine

Tasunke Witko (Crazy Horse): A Documentary Film-WoLakota Project, Paul Higbee

Transcript:

[Intro Music starts]

Phuong:Literally took them like 9 freaking months,[Lapis:dragging their feet] the gestation of a baby, to birth out a statement that was just "Yes, we will change the name."

Lapis:Mount Rushmore um was created off of the destruction of somebody else's history. Blowfacing Mount Rushmore is a return to the history that was erased history.

P:The naming of something affects what we focus on in this part of the story. Are we focusing on the folks who fought back, and resisted and survived and were harmed? Or are we centring it on the people who perpetrated harm?

P:Welcome to the Rising Roses!

L:A podcast which deconstructs concepts and reconstructs stories!

P:We're your hosts. Phuong...

L:And Lapis!

P:This is part 2 of our discussion on the power of naming. We'll be focusing on stories that are important to us regarding the power of naming in our wider community.

[Intro music continues and finishes. Record beep.]

L:How about you start Phuong? What is the significant example of the power of names in your community? How did this affect you and what would you do differently?

P:An example that I can definitely think of that is really relevant when it comes to naming is how the McGill varsity team name was changed from "Redmen" to... something else. [Phuong laughs] We actually have no confirmation of what the new name is but we successfully got the name Redmen to stop being associated with umm McGill Athletics, which is like a really big win.[Lapis:umm-hmm] Because this had taken literally decades of petitioning like I'm talking this was an issue since the '60's or '70's I believe? But what  resulted from those petitions to the administration was simply I think a withdrawal of the racist logo that was associated with it.

So I am actually unsure completely of the whole history of the Redmen name at McGill but I do believe that when it was first established (like pre-1960's or whatever, like maybe the '20's or something like that, maybe the 1910's) it wasn't actually supposed to be a racially coded thing. It was just I think to associate the idea that athletes at McGill were wearing red. But later on there was a racist caricature that became associated to the name Redmen and then people realized that that was bad and they just removed the racist caricature but they kept the team name Redmen. [Lapis:Mmm]

I think that something that's super important to recognize in how the politics of this name change happened is that when it finally happened, where the administration sent out an email confirming that they would be changing the name, the way that this was reported in news media outlets was more so framing it as a benevolent act of the administration that has come to their senses and realized that progress is important. Instead of the fact that so many student activists basically had to pull them by their teeth to even get them to change that name in the first place, right?

L: So their efforts got erased basically? [P:Yeah, absolutely!] And instead of it being the work of being indigenous people and allies to change umm society, instead of giving proper credit to those students, what was instead seen is "Oh the university has suddenly become more enlightened. Isn't McGill a more progressive place?" In fact it almost became a bit of an advertising campaign on behalf of McGill, of "wow, look at McGill's progressive values here." As opposed to well, can we consider that they had this name for literally decades and did nothing until literally forced by their own students to change?

P:Yeah, absolutely! I think that's something that we have to contend with and also the fact that it was an indigenous athlete himself that started this campaign. His name is Tomas Jirousek, he's amazing. He was actually named valedictorian for the graduating class of 2020 which was really deserved.

L:Oh, that's very good. Yeah, I'm very glad that Tomas got his recognition.

P:Yes! Me as well. It was an entire campaign my first year at McGill. Like there were plenty of protests at the Y intersection, which is a spot at McGill campus that is located right below the hill to the big arts building that's always seen so it's a very visible section of campus. There were lots of protests that happened that were trying to raise awareness for it. There were many folks who tabled outside of busy hallways handing out fliers explaining why the name was so harmful and just basically trying to get students to vote yes to the name change that would come on the Fall Referendum.

And the way that it was initially discussed very much mirrored the "well, we have to consider both sides of the debate" kinda theme, right? And I found it absurd that people could justify keeping a name that so many indigenous people within our McGill community had spoken up about being harmful, including an indigenous athlete themselves, right? Because I think a lot of the kinda counterpoint to changing the name was "well, it's not actually that offensive, that's not what it originated as, it just basically refers to McGill colours, it's not actually a racial slur. Blah, blah, blah." And just like arguing with intent over impact essentially, right? [L:mmm]

And, you know, I talked to a lot of these people and I kinda just explained to them like "Look. Insofar as these people are expressing a concrete harm that's being done by walking through the McGill athletics building and having to see this name splashed around everywhere [L:mmm-hmm] in spaces where they're trying to train and they're trying to work out and do other things is incredibly impactful to them, right? So you need to recognize that even if you yourself are not personally impacted by this, and you don't see an issue with this, you don't have the authority to comment on how this makes like other students feel and you need to weigh that over whatever qualms you may have over... changing traditions, I don't know.

Because I got really frustrated with how certain people within my residence in first year were responding, especially a response from this guy from France. [Lapis sniggers] He was kind of basically saying "look, there are other ways to adjust inequity within systems. Changing the names isn't actually going to fix like systemic barriers and descrimination. Blah, blah, blah." And I'm like okay, this is true, right? I don't think anybody in the Change The Name campaign was uh...

L:Racism is solved after we fix this name!

P:Exactly. I don't think anybody was campaigning on the process that McGill would suddenly become a safe haven for all indigenous students once this name was changed.

L:But here's the thing. If you aren't willing to make little changes in order to marginally impact the lives and improve the lives of marginalized people, then I don't see how you're ever going to be comfortable enough with big changes because those will affect your livelihood. Those will affect the way you walk and live in the world. [P:Yeah, absolutely] And even otherwise, it's ridiculous.

P:No, I completely agree. Even if it's something small, it's so much better than nothing basically, right? I just remember getting so livid, and being like "Look. You are literally white man from Europe. You have no idea."

L:You are the colonizer!

P:No literally! You have no idea the impacts of even small things will have on people of colour, and less broadly, indigenous folks right? Just in general, the experience of constantly being othered is already prevalent within primarily white institutions, such as McGill. It's like the bare minimum, basically, we can do is to not have a name that is so [P sighs] cringeworthy and [L:racist] frankly just bad and racist. I mean it like it's cringeworthy and bad just because it's such an unoriginal name.

L: Oh, our colours are red. We should be the Redmen. Hahaha, I'm very original.

P:Basically! Like what, you know? And of course that carries extreme racist connotations, right? We can't ignore that there used to be a racist caricature associated to it. There was a reason there was these protests, right?

L:If you just take away the racist caricature, the racism that was in the name remains. I mean, there's a reason people thought of the racist caricature in the first place.

P:Exactly! Why they associated it with that name, right, even if that's not what it was "intentionally supposed to be." I don't know, I was just very frustrated too with the way the administration framed it as a "Oh, we have to consider all sides.There's been great points of view made!" Again like, the way that the university completely like decentred the people who were directly affected by this.

L:Well, they were prioritizing the whiteness of the people who were offended that the name had been changed. Oh of course, all great points of view on every side! Thank you so much for your "But I don't care," contribution to this conversation, that was a really great point! however, we at McGill feel that since some people were offended, let's create a new name. 

P:Basically yeah, that's kinda how it was framed. Even if the Fall referendum was done and like the vote to change the name passed by like a large landslide, so many people were growing frustrated, myself included, with emails from the administration saying "Oh we're in the works of deciding whether we want to change it or not." Literally it took them nine freaking months [L:dragging their feet] the gestation of the baby, to birth out a statement that was just "Yes, We will change the name," with no like concrete actual mechanism for what the name would be changed to. The name was successfully repealed, but then they just instituted a bunch of other committees for consultation on what the new name  would be. In very bureaucratic fashion, it just dragged out and out.So basically, like since first year of university, we've just been McGill Sports? [Phuong laughs]Like there's been no actual name associated with it. 

There's no actual team name. For example, The University of Ottawa's is called Gee-Gees right? Of course, Carleton has Ravens. Every other school has some sort of name  potentially? And one of the potential names I wanted to vote for was "The McGill Martlets." Because Martlets is what we call the birds on our flag, the little martlet. And that's like our actual mascot, a red bird. And McGill Martlets has fucking alliteration, so I don't understand what took them so long? The appropriate name was right there this whole time.

L:But we needed to be racist Phuong!

P:Apparently that was too much work. That was such an exhausting thing to go through. I mean, exhausting only minimally for me right, like students who actually were negotiating with faculty and negotiating with the administration really were the ones at the forefront. I want to highlight that, but it was overall just a very frustrating process for all of us.

[Break Music Plays]

P:I just wish that students were centred more actively throughout the process, by both by the administration and also the discussions that ensued the name change afterwards in more mainstream media. Tomas was interviewed by umm CBC and a few other outlets surrounding his involvement with the name change but he was never I think actively centred in the initial reporting of the name change, which I found super frustrating.

L:Well here's an interesting thing, it's also about choosing who to name [P:Yeah, that's true.] When the media chose to decentre and downplay Tomas' involvement, what they're essentially saying is "What matters is McGill. What matters is their choice. What matters is not you students. You don't get to be on the front page. You do not get to be the subject of importance here." Even if the change was the result of their efforts, not the administration's competence or "Oh wow! We just woke up one day and realized that this name is incredibly racist!" [Lapis laughs]

P:Yeah, I completely agree. I guess I will wrap this up, my example, with stating that the actions that I could have done or would like to take in the future, if this happened. [Lapis:Okay.] I really think that I could have done more to encourage people to vote in the referendum. I mean, I think I did do the best I could in terms of talking to people I became friends with in first year, and just being really open and honest about where I was coming from.

But I also wish I called out people in a way that was more effective, that truly just got them to think about why they were prioritizing their feelings. And why were they prioritizing the feelings of like old alumnis who had some sort of weird sentimental attachment to the name, instead of the very real lived experiences of indigenous students and indigenous athletes at McGill. I think I wish if I could have done this again, I would have done a better job of taking on that emotional labour so it didn't fall on indigenous students and Tomas as well. And just basically reminding folks that this is a very real issue with tangible impacts and even if you agree with the fact that it's a racist name, if you don't agree that it should be changed what you're implicitly saying is that you value the comfort of non-indigenous folks over the safety and the wellbeing of indigenous folks, right?. [L:Mmm-hmm.] What it comes down to is what you prioritize and what you weigh.

 Because I think the issue is that people tend to try to put themselves in the like best of both worlds, centrist perspective where they say "Look, I respect people's opinion. I respect that you don't feel comfortable with this name. Blah, blah, blah." But like, that respect can only go so far if you don't actually back it up with tangible actions. There's only so much that you can do to play both sides, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And at the end of the day, you have to take a stance and you have to prioritize something because we all have limited time and limited energy on this Earth, right? Like we can't care about everything as much as I personally would like to, hahaha. And I really do think that when it comes to issues of who's being affected, we should prioritize those who're affected most. 

[Break Music Plays]

L:So to my example. It's actually something that's quite relevant in American politics right now, and that is the conversation around the name and defacement of the Six Grandfather's on the Black Hills. Or as Americans, or many Americans like to think of it, Mount Rushmore. Originally Mount Rushmore was known to the Lakota Sioux as the Six Grandfathers and it had a very important spiritual connotation to them. It was a sacred spot, it was a place of value. But the construction of a kind of memorial was started in the 1920's. And the whole idea was "Okay, let's pick a nice great mountain and we're going to carve into it four faces of some of our most important American historical figures. That way, you know, even the landscape, we have bent it to our will and now it will reflect America."

Obviously these sorts of things are very expensive and one of the investors, in fact the largest investor in this sculpture, was a guy called Charles E. Rushmore. And he donated what, uh, what's the modern day equivalent of $72,000 towards this giant ugly sculpture. He made his wealth basically off of investing and mining and then he used it to basically buy a bit of sacred space for himself. And brand it forever, instead of its historical name, as his own name. So I think in some ways Mount Rushmore is a very good encapsulation of colonialism. It's people coming into a very sacred, important space and saying "Listen, your tradition does not matter. What matters to me is the symbolism of conquering the natural world. What matters to me is the legacy of these, umm you know maybe they committed genocide against you, but to us they are important founding figures. So their face will now be on your sacred space."

 Oftentimes it can be hard to conceptualize just how offensive Mount Rushmore is. So an example I like to bring up is imagine if a group of people, like let's say, I don't know, a group of atheists came down to Notre Dame and they burned it down. And then they erected out of the ashes of Notre Dame, and all of the ruined wood, this giant statue. And in the statue's hand was a giant flag saying "I hate Christians." That would be what happened with Mt. Rushmore because not only was the land of the Lakota Sioux stolen from them. Not only was their sacred space bought and branded off of a colonizer who made wealth off of their, you know, ruining their own land. But now instead of the Six Grandfathers, now we have this hideous monument for American colonizers. Basically, if they were alive today I don't think anyone would have a problem considering them genocidal against indigenous people.

P:Yeah, absolutely. This is just something that I saw recently as I saw people making memes about the situation regarding the defacement of the Black Hills. I saw that the name Sioux actually derives from a shortening of an Ojibway word meaning "little snakes." [L:Mmm] And this was given to the Lakota people I think from the Ojibway because it's referred to as like being the enemy of like that tribe or something. [L:Oh, I see. So it's like... okay.] So it has like interesting negative connotations, I just wanted again to mention that because this is an episode on naming, right?[L:Oh, okay yeah.] I'm unsure. I tried to google what folks would prefer to refer to themselves as, like the difference between referring to, you know, peoples as Iroquois or Haudenosaunee.

L:One name I think is Oceti Sakowin.

P:Yeah, I saw that I think as one name because it is very dependent on also what tribe or nation you're from, right?

L:Mmm-hmm. The other thing about Mt. Rushmore, it was finished in 1941. That's younger than both of my grandparents.[P:Yeah same. *laughs] So this "Oh, it's such an important monument to America?" It's not really that old, and it's not really that vital.

[Break music plays]

P:People got super up in arms and alarmed when Notre Dame burned down, which as they should because it is a huge cultural monument right?

L:We're not here to do like the reverse position where it's like "Because France was bad, Notre Dame deserves to burn down." [L laughs]

P:Right. I mean, if you are someone who feels that way, I mean you're entitled to do so.

L:Yeah. I mean, it makes more sense if you were like a victim of French colonialism. [P:Yes! Yeah.]  And like okay, I understand. Your cultural legacy was destroyed by the French. Now you're seeing the French's cultural legacy being destroyed, not really for anyone's fault but it happened. I can understand why you might have mixed feelings. [P:Yeah] However the people who were saying that oftentimes they did not have any sort of connection to French colonialism. [P:There you go, yeah.] And it really, yeah I don't know...

P:That comes across as very edgy and weird, absolutely. Umm, I really feel that people really clutch their pearls to their chest at the thought of replacing Notre Dame with like, I don't know, a monument of the French king who was tyrannizing French people before the French revolution, right? [L:Well.] There's things that we pick and choose to remember and commemorate, and I think that, you know, the whole argument that "Oh we can't burn it down or we can't take it down because of history!" There are other ways to remember history that are so much more accurate, that doesn't glorify people who did horrible things. 

L:Mmm-hmm. And also Mt. Rushmore was created off of the destruction of somebody else's history. Blow facing Mt. Rushmore is a return to the history that was erased previously.

P:Yeah, absolutely. And I just wanted to also really bring back the justification of how settler colonialism perpetuates this idea that what happened was "deserved" or like what happened was like "a fair fight," and they just simply lost the war, right? You know, I think the framing of this issue is really false because it's not the same as, you know, wars of religion between two European countries, such as like I don't know, England and France.[L:Mmm-hmm.] Like of course those wars were horrible and they resulted in a lot of death as well but the difference is that there was an assumption that there was going to be a conflict in the first place right? [L:Yeah] Like the two parties who went into this knew that people were going to die and a war was going to happen. [L:Yeah.] Versus what happened with settler colonialism was an insidious, under-the-surface, shady backstabbing for like a lack of a better word. Because when Europeans arrived, there was no type of assumption that there would be war immediately on the arrival of Europeans right? Actually, you know, of course the point of contact between different nations varied.

L:Yeah. Some were rightfully, umm you know, violent and fearful because if somebody like showed on your front porch with a bunch of guns, maybe you'd have kind of a scared reaction as well.

P:Yeah, absolutely. I just want to stress the fact that like obviously not every nation of indigenous nation had the same point of contact relationship with Europeans. [L: Oh yeah.]  But even with that in mind, there were nations that were friendly.[L:Yeah.] We have to acknowledge that some nations were friendly and who actually helped out the settlers.

L:And some that were just kind of neutral. [P: Exactly!] You know, like "okay, you're there. We won't bother you, you won't bother us."

P:Basically, like the principle of like non-intervention. Of "Okay, we don't really know what these folks are doing. They kind of have a way of life that is very different from ours. They don't seem to be harming us right now, so we should just kind of let them be, right?"

Insofar as that is true, you know, we can't compare it imperialism from Genghis Khan right? Yeah, Genghis Khan did do a lot of horrible things and invade a lot of countries. [P laughs] Did bad stuff. But right now, it's not like Mongolian people still have control over every territory that Genghis Khan ruled, right?

L: The Mongolian Empire is no longer like the world hegemon.[L giggles]

P:Exactly, it doesn't exist any more. [P laughs] If anything, Mongolian people are largely at a disadvantage and are now the minority and are being persecuted, so that's very different. [L:Mmm-hmm] So it just alarms me that people buy into this framing of the narrative that "Oh well, colonialism was bad and we hurt indigenous folks. That was bad. But you know, it's over now! We're all holding hands around the fire singing Imagine by John Lennon." That's not what's happening.

L:As if Alberta didn't ban protesting against pipelines this year. As if the RCMP didn't brutalize communities that were protesting against all the pipelines in British Columbia.

P:Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the thing we have to remember is that settler colonialism is ongoing right? It still happens to this day and if that is true, it's even more pertinent to remove monuments that glorify how settler colonialism happened right? It's already important to remove statues and monuments glorifying of historical figures we recognize to be false. Like it's already important to do that once that part of history is over. But that part of history isn't even over here in Canada, in The United States, in Australia and in New Zealand! So like it's even more pertinent to be mindful of that. I don't see any reason to keep up any of those monuments due to the fact that it's still ongoing now. Yeah.

L:It's an argument that a lot of people like make that "Well how will we remember slavery if we take down all of the statues?" Well the people of Germany seem to remember the history of the Holocaust pretty well and they took all of the Nazi memorials down. All of Hitler's statues, smashed and broken to dust. They didn't need, you know, these ugly reminders to remain forever and ever and ever, and to do the ideological work of intimidating the people who were persecuted by these historical leaders. 

P:Yeah absolutely, and I think the reason they didn't need to do that because they didn't want to centre the people who did wrong right? [L:Mmm-hmm] Because that's also something we have to talk about in terms of naming. The naming of something affects what we focus on in that part of the story. Are we focusing on the folks who fought back and resisted and survived and were harmed? Or are we centring it on the people who perpetrated harm? [L:Yeah.]

Here's my issue with centring it on the people who perpetrated harm. You are basically again saying that it's more important that we vilify and recognize this person was doing harm, rather than shifting the focus and like recognizing how many people were trying to do right. That's why I think Germany has a wonderful model because instead of remembering Hitler and all the bad stuff he did, they chose to remember the Jewish people who survived under all odds of persecution. They chose to focus on Germans who risked their lives to shelter Jewish folks. They focused on the acts of resistance even under all the systemic oppression that was going on.  

[Break music plays]       

P:I want to talk about indigenous resistance specifically. Now that is neglected when we name things after colonizers and when we only teach students in school about the horrible things that happened to indigenous folks such as the '60's Scoop, Residential schools, '50's relocation of Inuit people, like when we only focus on the harmful things that happen to them. [L:The negative.] Yeah.

L:When we only name the history of atrocities against them[P:Absolutely], I think on one hand it's dispiriting for indigenous people because they think "Is my history just losing? Am I only a victim of genocide and persecution? Is it all I can be? Because that's all I'm being taught from my history." and on the other hand, and perhaps more insidiously, it teaches those who are not indigenous that indigenous people are historical losers. They are destined to lose, they have lost throughout history, and they have never been anything else but that.

P:Yeah absolutely! And again gives a false impression that indigenous peoples were passive in letting colonialism happen and they just again lay down and let smallpox take them away. [L:Mmm-hmm] When again they fought at every single step to hold onto their territories, their lands and their way of life and they even extended the curtousy and grace to settler governments by making treaties. [L:Yeah] Like they made treaties, they sat down and made treaties in good faith thinking that this would finally they would be seen as equals and be able have their way of life respected. But instead the Europeans saw the signing of treaties as a cessation or a surrender of land when that wasn't what was happening when the treaties were signed.

L:It wasn't mutual respect, it was about "What can we badger out of you this time?"

P:Yeah or what can we use to justify invading your lands essentially. [L:Mmm-hmm]  So I think we really have to remember that with the narrative of "Who One, who lost?" Umm, I also want to dissect that in terms of "History is written by the winners." How can you win or lose a fight you never even knew you were in in the first place? If somebody robbed you at gunpoint, if someone stole from you or killed you while you were just existing in peace, that was a crime done against you, right? That was something that happened to you and that was something that like you didn't have a chance to defend yourself.

L:You never really hear anyone say "The Jewish people lost the Holocaust."

P:Yeah, exactly! That's not ever how it's framed because it's seen as an act of purposeful genocide. [L:Mmm-hmm] And that's never how it's framed when you talk about indigenous history, it's talked about like a war. Instead of again, what it is really was, was an act of purposeful genocide.  

L:Or just "Oh well, disease just happened. Whoopsie Daisy. Disease. Isn't that a shame." [P:Exactly] Ignoring how Europeans often purposely spread that disease.

P:Yes, and even if they didn't purposely spread that disease, if you are constantly worrying about your lands being taken over, if you can't find any food because your land has been taken over because your land has been taken over and exploited. If you can't find any water because again your lands have been taken and exploited, you don't have much of a chance of fighting off diseases. Your immune system is going to be weakened because you don't have what you need to survive.

L: Mmm-hmm, you're already in a vulnerable state.

P:Yeah exactly, and why were you in a vulnerable state? Because people kept invading your freaking lands! I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that, you know like, the presence of Europeans absolutely contributed to the systemic-like, work-like destruction of land. So I guess the way I would change this quote is "History is written by those who grabbed the pen-and-paper from those who were writing it from themselves and history is written by thieves, murderers and a lot of other bad people." Uhh, and I don't think that it's accurate to call them winners in that sense. [P laughs] So yeah, that's what I would say.

L:Yeah and I think history isn't written, it's still being written. History isn't done being written, it is in the process of being written. [P:I see.] History, you know, and who will win, who will lose, it's not a useful way of looking at history just in terms of winners and losers, victims and victimizers because oftentimes the categories between them are not so clear cut. It's so binary. And I think to cast indigenous people eternally in the role of victim when no! They stood up, they resisted. Tecumseh very well could have formed an indigenous state(well not, you know, a state in the European sense but a powerful indigenous confederacy) that would've been more than capable of taking on America or the nascent colonial Canada had he not died. Louis Riel, another example, we wouldn't have a province called Manitoba if it hadn't been for his successful resistance against anglo-colonialism in the Red River settlement. Let's see who else. [P:Yeah.] Crazy Horse defeated General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn proving once and for all the whole idea "Oh yeah, it's destiny. These indigenous people can never overcome the American military!" to be complete nonsense. They could easily do it! People who would underestimate them would find out just how wrong they were very, very quickly.  

P:Absolutely and I think that we can still recognize that even though these resistances were worthy and contributed greatly to furthering indigenous sovereignty, I think we still have to recognize that that doesn't mean that that it's also an excuse to sweep the reality of what happened to them under the rug. [L:Oh no.]  It's kind of like how people like to use MLK and how he did so much for civil rights, but ignore that he was assassinated because he did this work! Louis Riel was executed as a traitor! [L:By the state. Mmm-hmm.] Yeah, because the state deemed him to be a dangerous figure who resisted anglo-canadian settler colonialism. So even though Louis Riel was an important figure that we need to remember and honestly should commemorate, we also can't ignore the fact that his life was taken away because of the work that he was doing. 

L:Oh and same deal for Crazy Horse. The American military not so subtly murdered him. He was "killed in an encounter with a prison guard." [P:Jeez, my gosh.] So hmm, wonder what that could be?

P:Yeah, there you go right? So I think when we talk about indigenous resistance, and when we centre indigenous resistances and narratives, it allows us to explore both the nuance of how these resistances gave a foundation for indigenous resistance today and how that's still ongoing. But we can also still talk about, umm, the atrocities that were committed in a way that is much more balanced and nuanced, that it isn't just, as you said, placing people in binary roles of the winner or loser, like perpetrator or victim. And we can truly actually learn about history in a way that is relevant to the dynamics happening in our contemporary society.

[Break Music Plays]

L:I think that this has been a really good discussion on the power of names, and what work names do to reinforce the harmful ideologies which govern our lives. Something that I think is just a helpful exercise to do is ask yourself to dig into the names of your everyday surroundings. Don't just look up, okay what are the names of my streets?  Who is being celebrated in my community? Who are the statues in my community being raised to? First of all, learn the names. Then question, how did these things come to be named this? Look into the history of the names in your spaces, in your family, in your community. 

P:Yeah, absolutely. I think another super important thing too is to get into touch with any local activists who are indigenous and ask them about any renaming efforts or campaigns and just get to know the history of what this land used to be called. Of course important to note here, if you are asking folks for their labour you should compensate them accordingly. Or if they don't have the time to do so, or the energy to do so, you can always seek out resources online. There are plenty of threads on Twitter that provide information on this. We will also further link this in our description of this episode. But umm obviously depending on the context of how willing they are to provide that labour, or how much support they would like to receive from you, that would be highly recommended that you do in addition to just learning about the names of the environment you live in.

L: We'll be putting a lot of resources to the things we referenced about indigenous history and also links to new indigenous podcasts, Twitter accounts, Instagrams accounts and other social media platforms in the postscript on the blog. So if you follow us there, you can get all of that good stuff. Thank you very much for tuning in, it's been a blast and we'll see you again next week!

[Ending Music Theme Plays]

P:In the next episode of "The Rising Roses.." 

 P:Thanksgiving should not be a way to mandate and force people to be with a family that they don't truly feel.

L:It's difficult to undo that sort of mentality while that ownership remains. You have to decouple the ownership and from there the grand delusion will break. 

P:Be sure to check out our website therisingroses.ca for show notes and other resources.

L:This episode was... 

P:..Produced and edited by Vu Hai Linh. The theme music was composed by Oscar Abley. 

L:All other sounds are from Zappslapp.com. Cover art is designed by Bridget Lee. 

P:Until next time!

[Closing theme ends. Record beeps.] 

 P:We're recording!

L:We are recording.

P:Alright, umm do you want me to go first?

L:I do want you to go first because I think last time I went first, so it's only fair. We must even the scales.

P:Wow, equity. 

L:Exactly.

P:We love to see it. [P laughs]