Renaming and Reclaiming:The Place We Are In

An entry from the vintage volume “A List of Micmac Names of Places, Rivers, Etc., in Nova Scotia”, compiled by Elizabeth Frame and printed in Cambridge, MA by John Wilson & Son, University Press, in 1892. The forward notes: The following list of Micmac (sic) names of places, rivers, etc., in Nova Scotia and neighborhood was compiled, at my request, by Miss Elizabeth Frame, of Shubenacadie, for the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and was duly presented at the meeting on June 9, 1892. She was aided in her labors by a Micmac Indian, as well as by the published works of Mr. Gesner and Dr. Rand. It is now printed at the expense of a gentleman of Cambridge, who is interested in Indian philology. Signed S. A. G. (signifying Dr. Samuel A. Green, who was librarian for the MA Historical Society for many years)

This is the profound place from which we start with reclaiming and renaming, demonstrating the complete subversion and inversion of Indigenous ways by Christianized colonization. To turn a phrase, “In the beginning was the word. Words matter.” Linguistic accuracy to the side for a moment, we witness a trajectory from the original concept of Great Spirit contravened (to use the metaphor of natural law) to Great Evil, by a deliberate act of erasure and replacement - that of re-naming. The action of imposing a false dichotomy of good/bad, in and of itself, fomented the destructive power of separation. The missionaries were enacting exactly that role which they purported to eschew. Without this artifice, the entire dogmatic construct collapses in upon itself. As Annie Dillard wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: ““Somewhere, and I can’t find where, I read about an Eskimo (sic) hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”