Maine officials are coming under fire after handing a $132,000 contract to a racial justice group, only for it to conclude with a 30-minute webinar on ‘problematic’ place names.
Taxpayers footed the bill for the lecture as part of the state’s employment of non-profit Atlantic Black Box (ABB), which claims to ‘engage the public in the collective rewriting of our regional history.’
In footage of the webinar this week, ABB founder Meadow Dibble urged attendees to acknowledge suffering caused by ‘white settler people’ as she rattled off place names Maine residents should feel offended by.
The towns of Norway and Mexico were seen as insulting, ‘Old Maid Rock’ was determined to be sexist, and Maine should be rebranded to ‘Dawnland’ to represent the Native American Wabanaki tribe’s original name, Dibble argued.
‘You could say that reading Maine’s place names is something like reading a book,’ Dibble said. ‘And some folks will tell you it’s a comedy. But when you read these names through the lens of racial equity, this book can read more like a horror novel.’
The seminar also included a Native American representative claiming she researches names of places before travelling and purposefully avoids anywhere sounding ‘suspicious.’
Atlantic Black Box presented a slide-show on Maine’s ‘problematic’ place names, which came after landing a $132,000 contract with the state to ‘reckon with our region’s complicity in the slave trade’
Meadow Dibble, the founder of Atlantic Black Box, used the presentation to remark on the ‘painful histories behind some of these names that normalized white supremacy and violence against BIPOC communities’
The woke lecture, first reported by The Maine Wire, reportedly began with Dibble listing her pronouns as ‘she/ they’ before insisting attendees to re-evaluate ‘what is behind the names that are all around us.’
Among the names she took objection to included the small island of Nipple, Maine, and the naming of Maine itself, which she felt would be better suited to the Wabanaki tribe’s ‘Dawnland’.
The host then displayed a standard place name sign with the sites replaced with monikers such as ‘Land Thief Hill’, ‘Enslaver Lake’ and ‘White Supremacy Hill.’
Certain place names were also deemed to ‘objectify or denigrate women, sexualize the landscape or play on tropes of loose women and witches’ – with ‘Old Maid Rock’ seen as particularly troubling.
Dibble added that ‘that is a topic that deserves its own presentation’, potentially after another taxpayer-funded contract.
She continued: ‘Once we know what is behind the names that are all around us, once we can see what lies behind the facade, the question we have to ask ourselves is are we as eager to continue honoring them.
‘Many Wabanaki elders, of course, and many of the knowledge keepers in Maine’s multi-generational black families are aware of the painful histories behind some of these names that normalized white supremacy and violence against BIPOC communities.
‘And we know that repeated constant exposure does harm.’
The webinar called for the end of alphanumeric codes being used for certain sites in Northern Maine, as they were determined to only be named for ‘resource exploitation.’
‘Maine is full of the soulless quantifiers that have served to parcel out land to timber barons. And I just want to contrast those numerical names designed to facilitate resource extraction with Dawnland,’ said Dibble.
The small island of Nipple, Maine (pictured) reportedly came under fire in the woke presenation
Dibble also took issue with Maine counties named after America’s Founding Fathers, including Washington, Hancock and Franklin Counties.
‘Franklin County was named after founder Benjamin Franklin, who was an active participant in the slave trade and an enslaver before becoming an abolitionist,’ she said.
The webinar was reportedly the final result of ABB’s $132,000 contract with the state, which Maine says on its government website is intended to ‘take up the critical work of researching and reckoning with our region’s complicity in the slave trade.’
The slide-show presentation then saw others step in to recount their struggle with Maine’s place names, with Maine State Geologist Steve Dickson noting that he has to use ‘offensive’ maps in his work that reflect old sites before they were re-named.
Native American activist and member of the federal Wilderness Society Jessica Lambert also spoke out about the direct harm the ‘offensive’ names have on her, as she claims to find herself unable to travel to certain places.
‘When you change the name from one that’s honoring into one that is denigrating people, that is racist, that is derogatory, you’re changing that space,’ Lambert said.
Native American activist and member of the federal Wilderness Society Jessica Lambert (pictured) spoke out about the direct harm the ‘offensive’ names have on her, saying ‘a lot of times I’ll be looking on Google Maps and see like a name that I’m like, that’s suspicious’
‘You’re tipping the balances of power, and I know that being an Indigenous person and going out a lot of times I’ll be looking on Google Maps and see like a name that I’m like, that’s suspicious or oh, that’s derogatory.
‘And I don’t want to go there. I don’t feel comfortable going there.’
The webinar reportedly concluded with a discussion on a piece of upcoming state legislation that would establish a State Names Authority, a move to replace names of sites the committee determines are insulting.
The bill, which is up for a vote on January 23, would also mandate that going forward, members of the State Names Authority must include a black person and a Native American person.
