I was blown away by Neil Godbout's editorial supporting not only the significant role that the Lheidli T'enneh are achieving in the city's centennial and the Canada Games but going beyond that to calling for the long overdue restoration of the real name of the place.
The usurpation of Native place names was one of the most insidious aspects of the theft of much of B.C., the un-treatied occupation and exploitation of lands and resources which were already owned by First Nations. It was a crime so expansive that it is easy for we settlers to be unaware of it. It was accompanied by the shame of residential schools and the extirpation of central cultural institutions (the potlatch), languages, and traditional government. This happened all over North America but the story of the dispossession and forced removal of the Lheidli T'enneh from their reserve -- which included all of Prince George between Carney, 17th and the rivers - is especially wrought with duplicity and racism.
Your ideas on the naming-- even if it will be tough slogging to have them enacted - are a clear signal that opinion leaders among settler society are coming around to decolonizing themselves.
Norman Dale
Prince George
