[Tweeters] Historical Perspective on Re-naming Birds

[Michael Price]

Hi Tweets

It's said that history is written by the victors.  Which, after the 19th
century US government (military/bureaucratic) and British/Canadian
(bureaucratic) genocides of the indigenous inhabitants, might explain the
absence of much prior nomenclature and classification from the people who
had lived here for thousands of years and had, therefore, thousands of
years-worth of intimate empirical knowledge and their own nomenclature and
life histories of North American bird species prior to the advent of
European science. Granted, European science may have been more formalised
and perhaps more systematic, but to assume a European precedence which has
ignored and/or denigrated such a knowledge base is, frankly, to me, an
enormous waste of a wealth of knowledge.


Incidentally, I have a book of 'original' (i.e., hunters') bird names of
North American birds. Many are outright racist/misogynist names to which no
nomenclatural committee would *dare* to return today (pop quiz: which sea
duck was commonly called 'n-word-head?), yet changing them at the time
engendered debates as heated as those now occurring concerning possibly
dodgy honorifics. I love to watch this same process happening in real time.
But then I have always felt that setting cats among pigeons should be an
Olympic sport.


But it's worth remembering this controversy is part of a larger struggle:
to find and achieve justice. Always simple to say, always difficult to do.
But we have to keep at it. As Paul McCartney sang, "With every mistake/We
must surely be learning..."

best, m
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