[Tweeters] Historical Perspective on Re-naming Birds

[Roger Craik]

Hi Michael and Tweets

"There are more 34 First Nation languages in British Columbia, 
representing more than half of all First Nation languages in Canada" 
Then, there's the US and Mexico.

Not quite sure how you would rationalize incorporating of all this prior 
knowledge into a compendium of bird names familiar across North America 
or the rest of the world, for that matter.

Just for starters whose name would be picked for what bird? Lots of 
potential for offending different groups there. Do we identify birds by 
habitat, geography or human cultural areas?

This whole discussion looks more like trying to take the fun out of 
birding as opposed to doing anything productive.

Roger Craik
Maple Ridge BC

On 2023-11-26 2:33 p.m., Michael Price wrote:

> 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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