[Talk-ca] First Nations reserve naming

[Hoser AB]

Well now Michael has taken to replying to my email personally rather than
replying to the mailing list, but I'm going to share my reply to him with
you all in the hopes that anyone else who takes his position starts to
"get" what I and others are talking about.
Michael: I didn't make any false accusations against you or your
intentions. I told you your change was culturally insensitive. And it is. I
know it's not your intent to *be* culturally insensitive, but the changes
you made *are*, for the reasons I've already explained.
I don't ascribe any malice to you, but rather bluntly I'm going to tell you
one thing: when it comes to the Tsuut'ina, you are ignorant. I'm not saying
or meaning to say that you're stupid, or unsophisticated, or whatever else
you want to read into that statement. All I'm trying to tell you is: the
changes you made were rude, and you made them because you don't know any
better. I'm desperately trying to explain how your changes need to reflect
the sensitivities of the people whose land you're trying to "accurately"
describe.
Re-read my earlier message to the mailing list. *Please*.
You've perceived an issue on the map, and come up with a solution for it,
because you're operating from a false premise: that the names of First
Nations reserves cannot also be the names of the people who inhabit it.
Put it this way: I already replied in a comment that we don't have separate
relations on the map for the land that comprises Canada and the polity of
Canada. We don't because they are in fact one and the same: the land *is*
the polity, the polity *is* the land. And so too is "the people". Canadians
inhabit the lands we call Canada in a country called Canada!
You persisting with an "official" reference to "Tsuu T'ina Nation No. 145"
isn't far off in principle from some Briton insisting that the relation for
Canada should be renamed "Dominion of Canada". It would be silly to us as
Canadians, "Dominion of" is *laughably* out of date. The "Indian Reserve
Number __" nomenclature is still "official" on many federal government
maps, in many federal government databases, etc. but just because it's
"official" does not mean it's "accurate". In the case of the Tsuut'ina it's
culturally insensitive and rude to use it.
This is precisely why I and others have been writing to this mailing list
saying "we need to BE CAREFUL when it comes to this". It's a politically
and culturally sensitive topic. You didn't mean to open this Pandora's box,
but you have, and I'm trying to help close it.


On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 11:23 AM Michael Stark <michael60634 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm trying to be as accurate as possible when adding the names. I am also
> doing research to make sure everything is accurate. Please refrain from
> being rude or making false accusations about me or my intentions as you did
> in my changeset comments.
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2022, 12:04 PM Hoser AB <hoserab1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>>
>>
>> I think I'm the one who prompted Michael's question in the first place,
>> from comments on a change he made to the Tsuut'ina Nation next to Calgary (
>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/129596686).
>>
>>
>>
>> First of all, I think we all need to back up and heed Amos's comment "it
>> ought to be a case by case thing and any mass changes are probably not
>> capturing the local naming unless the source data being applied has been
>> created that way". He's bang-on, right on the money with that. There is no
>> "top-down" solution here, to be uniformly applied to all aboriginal lands
>> across Canada, and relying entirely on an "official" federal government
>> source could result in the map taking an ethnocentric and colonialist
>> position on the matter.
>>
>>
>>
>> Some reserves are occupied by multiple nations, or bands within a nation.
>> Some nations have multiple reserves. Some nations have one reserve. (Some
>> nations have no reserve!) Michael asked "Is it best to use the name of the
>> reserve, or the name of the group that inhabits the reserve?" To that I say
>> we should follow basic OSM naming policy: use the common name that someone
>> with a "boots on the ground" perspective would use. As such, often the name
>> of the nation *is* the common name of the reserve, especially nations with
>> one reserve. Pierre illustrated this very well: the Mistissini Cree people
>> live in a village called Mistissini on the reserve lands called Mistissini.
>> The name of the nation is sometimes applied to their reserve lands, to
>> certain sections of their reserve lands, to towns within those reserve
>> lands, or all at once.
>>
>>
>>
>> It seems pretty obvious to me that Michael parsed through the list of
>> reserves from ISC/CIRNAC (
>> https://fnp-ppn.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/fnp/Main/Search/RVListGrid.aspx?lang=eng)
>> and believes we should be applying the "official name" to the "name=*" key
>> for the respective reserve relations on the map. However, some of these
>> names aren't current, and many aren't what anyone would commonly call these
>> reserves. In particular with respect to the Tsuut'ina, the reserve name
>> *is* the nation's name; the land itself *is* "the Tsuut'ina Nation".
>> Changing the name to "Tsuu T'ina Nation 145" is problematic for a couple
>> reasons:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) as I just wrote, the common name of the reserve lands is "Tsuut'ina
>> Nation", so it should have primacy over the ISC/CIRNAC "official" "Tsuu
>> T'ina Nation 145", and,
>>
>>
>>
>> 2) the Tsuut'ina officially changed the English spelling of their
>> nation's name from "Tsuu T'ina" to "Tsuut'ina" years ago, and ISC/CIRNAC
>> simply haven't updated it. (This after generations of the "official" name
>> being "Sarcee", an exonym from the neighbouring Siksika (Blackfoot);
>> calling Tsuut'ina people "Sarcee" is not unlike calling Inuit "Eskimos"...)
>> To persist with the "Tsuu T'ina" spelling because it's "official" is,
>> frankly, disrespectful to the Tsuut'ina people.
>>
>>
>>
>> Michael also deleted "name:srs=Tsúùtʼínà", the name of the nation (and
>> thus the reserve, see 1 above) in the Tsuut'ina language itself, from the
>> relation. He said in a comment that he has contacted the Tsuut'ina Nation
>> to ask what the name of the reserve is in the Tsuut'ina language, and he's
>> very quickly going to find out it's "Tsúùtʼínà"!
>>
>>
>> We have the "official_name" key and we can and should use it for official
>> names from ISC/CIRNAC or other official sources. In that respect the
>> information is not lost, but it also takes a back seat to what the actual
>> day-to-day name of these lands is. We should otherwise tread very carefully
>> with the "name" key, and in my opinion should give deference to the names
>> that the people who inhabit the land use.
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
>>
>
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