When harm is coming our way,  we have to be a protective force, in our warrior stance, for people and planet. Birthing is messy, and painful, as Sherri Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset  Mitchell reminds us, in a Livestream Sunday called “The Story Goes On” with speakers helping us ground ourselves on the path to a livable future, one we are birthing together. This blog post marks my departure from writing with potential or desire to be heard by people who hold themselves separate and who somehow believe that they can thrive as the planet they depend on continues to be diminished by their beliefs and actions. People with those beliefs, however, seem to be yelling too loud to hear anything but their own voices, so this shift for me means my writing now is for people who understand our earthly kinships and are listening for ways to connect with the “collective birthing” of our deepened humanity. Understanding harms and speaking against them is a small step.

The new administration’s early executive orders included one to “restore” place names that “honor the legacy of American greatness.” As is common among the onslaught of DC declarations these days, lack of logical congruence can confuse a person. Doing some due diligence research, I can’t find any former occasions when the Gulf of Mexico was ever referred to as the Gulf of America.  So, despite this name change being embraced by the DOI’s Board of Geographic Names within the first two weeks of the administration change, calling it a “restoration” is clearly a misnomer. As is calling this country America, but we’ll let that slide for the moment.

The second name restoration at the top of the list was “Mt. McKinley,” because this highest peak on Turtle Island certainly should be called after a President who signed the Curtis Act of 1898, which dismantled the Five Civilized Tribes in order to open their land to acquisition by white settlers, and who supported both assimilation policies to erase Native cultures and the allotment program to force an end to communal landholding and to governing systems that contradicted colonial fundamentals. Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for 10,000 years, and now both Alaska’s House and Senate have signed a resolution requesting to retain the name Denali (which was adopted by the U.S. in 2015). Our government's leader, however, insists on this restoration because “President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” A talent for thievery does not merit our present-day approval, despite the DOI’s published commitment that geographic names “reflect the values, sacrifices, and accomplishments that define our Nation.”