After over a year of debate and council meetings, the decision to change the town name of Queen Charlotte on Haida Gwaii back to \"Daajing Giids Llanagaay\" will be made May 2.<\/p>\n
Indigenous Peoples in Canada are working to restore their place names and revitalize their languages after colonial policies and law sought to eradicate them, according to advocates.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \"During the last several centuries, huge swaths of Indigenous lands were remapped and renamed by colonial powers, usually by white men. More often than not, places were named according to the whims of surveyors, cartographers, and politicians of the day. This is in stark contrast to the deeply meaningful, personal, and often spiritual naming practices of Indigenous peoples.\"<\/span><\/p>\n This is from the Yellowhead Institute paper on Reclaiming Indigenous Place Names<\/a>, a 2019 paper co-authored by Christina Gray and Daniel R\u00fcck. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Of course, renaming has been a critical part of settler colonialism generally, which is\u00a0 predicated on the erasure of Indigenous peoples, including their languages, cultures and social structures\u2014any and all evidence of Indigenous peoples\u2019 living presence. Thus, reverting to Indigenous place names in relation to oral histories, Indigenous laws, and languages is part of the process of reclaiming Indigenous knowledge and territories,\u201d the paper continues.<\/span><\/p>\n The Council of the Haida Nation recently restored 12 place names back to their original Haida names. The project, called Giving Back Names<\/a>, was the result of two years of work between the <\/span>BC Geographical Names Board and consultation with Haida citizens, community, leaders and organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n