Posted by: chupacabra
This is an argument that has interested me for a while and another aspect where I think we mistakenly took our cues from academia. Without English phonetic translations, it makes learning the words and language a lot harder and that is the same for most indigenous people that want to learn their own language, not just me trying to read a sign on the side of the road. I also think they should stop renaming non-indigenous communities just to have the names on the highway signs. If a settler community was created 100 years ago near a geographic feature that has a traditional name, rename the feature, not the town.
Yeah, the renaming discussion has a lot of parts to it besides the obvious ones. In the case of Matthew Begbie school there is the missing positive history that is good for all parties and from my pov if that history was presented properly it shows his name as one that should be honoured and not disapraged. So that is an issue on it's own. The remaning issue in general is separate from the history of Begbie, but connected in this case because the school that bore his named is being renamed.
The renaming issue, and the spelling/phonetics surrounding it, imho, should be considered from a view that is greater than just the name that's being replaced. The the history of Indigenous people on this land, their culture, how Europeans affected Indigenous people and how both peoples move forward all need to be considered. From the language pov, Indigenous people had an oral history, not a written one, so it's important to know where these name place spellings are coming from. That would be from American linguist Bret Galloway who worked with speakers of the Halkomelem language. So in effect, one person determined how we've been seeing Indigenous peoples language in written form recently, which is difficult to read and pronounce. That's why I shared the WaPo article, as I think it does a decent job talking about how we might be able to do a better job of honouring Indigenous places names while into our current society.
That said, nothings really been easy for Indigenous people who have been forced to assimilate into European (British mostly in BC) ways of being. So is doing a relatively small thing like naming a school on the traditional territory of the Musqueam people in a manner that reflects them and their culture a really difficult thing to do? It comes down to what type of society people want to live in and the values they want to live by. If people want to live in a society that is dominated by one culture or way of being that continues to trample on the peoples and societies that existed here for centuries (millenia) before Europeans arrived then we can just maintain the status quo. If we want to live in a society that recognizes a diversity of cultures and identities, especially the ones that existed here pre-colonialism, then we need to be willing to recognize their cultures and values and make an effort to say they matter. I think naming a school, park or street to help that happen seems like a small thing, but we need to be considerate of how that happens.
