During a year that saw much unrest, one powerful lesson that comes from 2020 is that names can change. Alongside transnational calls for racial justice, we witnessed racist sports team names and mascots be expunged and monuments and statues honouring racist figures be removed. Within the outdoor climbing community, a heated debate took place over misogynistic, racist, and homophobic names assigned to cliffs and crags. In this talk, I use an analysis informed by feminism, anti-racism, and decolonization to discuss the implications of route names within a shifting cultural terrain. I revisit data I collected in 2018 that examined women’s reactions to sexist climbing route names, and I document significant route name changes that took place in 2020. In this way, my presentation aims to weave together a tale of oppressive naming practices and a tale of collective grassroots resistance. Importantly, I argue that we cannot divorce the politics of naming routes from a settler colonial logic that has long used mapping and (re)naming land as a strategy for nation-building. I conclude with a discussion of the relevance of naming practices (e.g., trails, routes, parks) to natural resource management.

The Natural Resources & Environmental Studies Institute (NRESi) at UNBC hosts a weekly lecture series at the Prince George campus. Anyone from the university or wider community with interest in the topic area is welcome to attend. Go to http://www.unbc.ca/nres-institute/colloquium-webcasts to view the presentation remotely.

Past NRESi colloquium presentations and special lectures can be viewed on our video archive, available here.