We are writers of the land. We can create place by recognizing the land and taking part in the story of that place. We can offer names and share our stories of the place and honour the life that exists there.
There are beautiful places in this city, and some go unnoticed or unrecognized. One way to create new stories is by taking back the maps.
If there are places close to your heart, invisible spaces which are “nameless” to the map makers and city planners who may just disregard them by assuming no one has relations to that place, then identify the place with a name and tell your stories to deepen connection and knowledge of that land.
I really mean this. Not so much in an effort to give legitimacy to city planners or cartographers, but instead to claim heart woven tethers to the world around us. It is calling out our experiences of the world into the world and giving shape and volume to our connections.
Now, understanding the beauty and cute nature of these proclaimations, I also wonder about it. I am concerned that this just reinforces a colonial practice of Euro-descended settlers laying their big white blanket perspectives on the land, perpetuating ongoing erasure of indigenous connections to that land.
Is my renaming a place, or maybe in this case, naming a nameless or unspoken/forgotten place, just another aggression against the cultures which struggle to just survive and maintain ceremony and life-connection to places?
I don't know, but it gives me questions and drives me to look further into what my connection to place might look like, and how to support others in their connection to place.
