Unsettling Settler Space
On 29-September, Natchee Blu Barnd, Susan Blight and Wil Patrick presented Unsettling Settler Space, as part of the 2021 Fall Urbanism Lecture Series, co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program, and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT. Organized by Catherine D’Ignazio and the Data + Feminism Lab the presenters shared their work on the roles that place names play in sustaining and contesting settler colonialism as well as claiming and creating space for Indigenous peoples.
Natchee Blu Barnd’s book, Native Space (OSU Press, 2017) illustrates the ways that Native people in North America sustain and create Indigenous geographies in settler colonial nations. Susan Blight is the co-founder of Ogimaa Mikana, an artist collective working to reclaim and rename the roads and landmarks of Anishinaabeg territory. And Wil Patrick explores the role of colonial monuments and infrastructures in the production of political spaces in Canada to understand how settler groups utilize monumentality in place-making.
The presenters engage with the practice of Indigenous place naming, asking how to transform (or translate) culture? Their collective practices and research highlight the urgency and importance of Unsettling Settler Space, reminding us that the language we use and the spaces we occupy are intrinsically linked.
Natchee Blu Barnd is a comparative and critical ethnic studies scholar interested in the intersections between ethnic studies, cultural geography, and Indigenous studies. His research focuses on issues of race, space, and Indigenous geographies.
Susan Blight (Anishinaabe, Couchiching First Nation) is an interdisciplinary artist working with public art, site-specific intervention, photography, film and social practice. Her solo and collaborative work engages questions of personal and cultural identity and its relationship to space.
Wil Patrick a W̱ENITEM (settler) PhD Candidate in the Critical Geographies Research Lab at the University of Victoria and Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholarship recipient on unceded SON̠IS and W̠SÁNEĆ Territory. He studies the cultivation, maintenance, and defense of political infrastructures towards the development of emancipatory spaces.
By Joris Komen, Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fellow, Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.
