Place Names

I was fascinated by the way Mike Mortimer had us explore Cusick’s construction of place, as his writing occupies a liminal space between fact and myth, speaking in the native voice, while using the form of English to make it publicly accessible; as one of the first Native Americans to write a narrative for and of Native Americans, his writing is uniquely unfiltered through the lens of colonist. The examination of conceptions of place in this way is reminiscent of Keith Basso’s exploration into mapping the constructions and contemporary manifestations of Apache Place Names, in his ethnography Wisdom Sits in Places.

The names of places amongst the Western Apache differ structurally from Western interpretations of space in that Place Names are understood to be originally uttered and established by ancestors, and are continually from the moment of authorship onward, believed to be directly quoting ancestral speech in every contemporary utterance.  Part of what make Apache place-names so complex is that when employed, they require the addressee to realize their contemporary role vis a vis the ancestral narrative; upon being addressed through a place-name, the current context of that place emerges in a very different and distinct way to the addressee. Place Names are never uttered to simply serve a referential function; there is always a richer purpose that challenges the addressee to reflect upon themselves: Place Names can, among other things, evoke prior historical tales, convey moral lessons, and offer personal advice/ancestral knowledge. As a story telling mechanism, Place Names are used as situating devices, rendering the space a place that possess the potential to teach a powerful lesson through the recontextualization of past events.

There is thus, with every utterance of a place-name, a constant interplay between the present and the past that the place infers, and further, the past of the addressee, for whom the name is made explicit in the present. Detaching place names from their ancestral context does an immense disservice, as their historical significance defines and dictates the ways in which they are employed and come to be meaningful in contemporary Apache life. The most circulated example of this is the Place Name “Shades of Shit,” a story recounting a historical event in which two kin related villages had a dispute over corn distribution, resulting in one village forcing the other to remain within their shades (homes), thus defecating in their communal spaces and nearly dying until they agreed to share their corn. When uttered in a contemporary context, this Place Name is used to convey a lesson concluding that kinship is more important that economic relations in Apache society.

Perhaps most relevant to our discussion is that Basso learns, as an outsider, he struggles to understand the contextual vastness of Apache place-names: he outlines that the communicative competence of Place Names was “never in question, that is, to anyone but [himself] – a superfluous, slightly stupefied, and roundly perplexed outsider” that was often unable to comprehend the complexities of their discourse. (Basso 1996: pg 82). The acknowledgement of one’s position as an outsider is almost always made explicit in Ethnographic writings. It is something I am constantly reminding myself of as I navigate this place of the Adirondacks, occupying a bizarre liminal space: this place is my current home, and yet, I remain largely unaware of the vast historical complexities that have created the contemporary context in which I exist.

And yet, despite lacking a historical foundation, I think we often create Place Names for ourselves as outsiders entering new spaces; places have the unique ability to transport us to a different temporal and contextual settings, possessing immutable associations that remind us of both positive and negative experiences and lessons learned. While they are without the deep ancestral foundation and cultural complexities of the Apache, there are already places here in which I have formed lasting associations that continue to influence the way in which I navigate the Adirondacks.