Who decides our place names? Power, Policy, and Memory in Edmonton

Matthew Dance

This post is part of a series. See the other entries here.

As a structure and not an event, settler colonialism is often accomplished through seemingly banal acts. Through bureaucracy and the establishment and implementation of policy and process, settler colonialism can deeply impact a place, small decision by small decision, gradually over time. Naming, or renaming, a street, neighbourhood, or town is such an act.

Previous writing in Active History, such as Sean Graham’s Changing Place Names, reminds us that most place names in Canada were imposed under colonialism and the processes to rename places today often raise questions of whose history is being acknowledged, whose erased, and how communities reckon with those legacies. Equally, Thomas Peace’s What’s in a Place Name: Adelaide Hoodless and Mona Parsons uses the stories of individuals to show that the naming schools and parks after people sends messages about whose contributions are seen as worthy of public remembrance.

As a geographer, I’ve long been fascinated by how people understand their environments. After completing my B.A., I spent several years working as a field technician across northern Canada. One summer in the early 1990s, while on Devon Island, I heard Inuktitut on the radio during our daily check-ins. Only then did I begin to grasp that people had lived and thrived there long before settlers arrived — a realization that set me on a long, sometimes uneven journey toward learning the missing geographies absent from my 1980s education.

Decades later, during my M.A., I discovered that Edmonton lacked a place-name dataset, so I created one based on Naming Edmonton: From Ada to Zoie. Working with the data revealed how few Indigenous names existed and how most commemorations honoured European men. Women, people of colour, and Indigenous peoples were largely excluded. Curious about how naming might become more inclusive, and eager to build a more comprehensive dataset, I joined the City of Edmonton’s Naming Committee to explore what a more representative process could look like.

What’s in a name: The history of Amiskwacîwâskahikan

Amiskwacîwâskahikan, meaning Beaver Hill House, was the original name for the area that came to be called Fort Edmonton and later Edmonton. This place has long a been meeting grounds for the Nehiyawak, Tsuut’ina, Niitsitapi, Metis, Dene, Nakota Sioux, and Anishinaabe as a place to gather, hunt, fish, and rest. Located within Treaty 6, the city now called Edmonton was incorporated in 1892 and quickly grew to envelop smaller towns and settlements. This expansion was facilitated through land dispossession and theft. For instance, the Papaschase First Nation (Alexander First Nation) in present-day southeast Edmonton, was stolen by settlers through a series of questionable land deals. This process accelerated following the Oliver Act in 1911, which Edmontonian Frank Oliver shepherded through the House of Commons. The Oliver Act permitted the forced removal of reserves near towns with 8,000 people or more, and became an essential technology of land theft and white possession in western Canada.

Context: Edmonton naming committee – naming policy and practice

Since its inception in 1892, Edmonton had grown significantly and had incorporated several smaller towns, with duplicate place names and different addressing systems. Place naming in Edmonton was mostly ad hoc through the 19th and into the 20th centuries. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century, that there was formal policy on how places were to be named. In 1956, Edmonton passed its first naming bylaw (Bylaw No. 3414), which stated that the committee should decide names based on “historical significance” and “suitability…to the use and function” of what was being named. Additionally, at the inaugural meeting of the committee on March 14th, 1956, the chairman,  Alderman J. R. Falconer, observed the committee was established to “do away with repetition and avoid confusion with similarity of names…. The proper distribution of names should be considered. Names typically suited to Alberta or to Edmonton and names having historical significance might well be chosen.”[1]

While there have been minor amendments or elaborations to the naming policy since 1956, significant changes were not made until recently. The naming of an Edmonton neighbourhood in 1961 illustrates the typical process that prevailed at that time. A 1961 letter from J.E. Duggan advocated that a neighbourhood be named after his father, John Joseph Duggan, who was the principal landowner in the area and former Mayor of Strathcona. The Duggan Neighbourhood was so named in 1961 (see Figure 2, J.E. Duggan letter).

Duggan’s letter is just one example of the robust correspondence and debate found in the Edmonton archives and newspapers about place names in Edmonton. There are letters from the family of famous Alberta figures, such as Emily Murphy’s daughter, Evelyn. There are also letters from developers, petitions from community leagues, as well as citizens suggesting names such as the undated handwritten note (see Figure 3: Scottish and Ulster Name Suggestions) suggesting Scottish or Ulster names for areas within the Grandview Heights neighbourhood.

While the Names Advisory Committee would have considered name suggestions, it is important to recognize that it was a member’s only club of elected officials or City Council-appointed professionals who ultimately decided Edmonton’s Place Names, and the results are striking. A pattern emerges through an analysis of Edmonton place names memorializing people from the 1950s to the 2000s:

• Male place names such as Churchill, Oliver, and Laurier represent 57% of places memorialized.
• Female names represent 7% comparatively.[2]
• The vast majority of place names originate in western Europe or the United Kingdom.
• Less than 10% of place names stem from First Nations, Métis, or Inuit roots.[3]

Until recently, Indigenous names were assigned without consultation and for often suspect reasons. For example, at a City Council meeting on December 18, 1974, Council passed a motion to adopt the name “Sakaw” for a residential neighbourhood within the Mill Woods area in southeast Edmonton. The rationale given by the by Council for the name was:

In view of the fact that the Mill Woods area lies within the boundaries of the 39.9 square miles which comprised the Indian Reserve N0. 136 allotted in 1889 under Treaty No. 6 NWT to Papaschase and his band, the Committee feels that Cree names are suitable and consistent with the names previously adopted in this area.[4]

The meeting minutes indicate that “‘Sakaw’ is derived from the Cree word meaning ‘wooded area.’”

This performative act of naming small portions of stolen land in “honour” of the people whose land was stolen is part of a broader national pattern – a bureaucratic bait and switch. In this example, City Council and the Names Advisory Committee felt that they were honouring the Papaschase First Nation. The land was stolen, in part through the actions of Frank Oliver, and a people dispossessed as part of the broader process of settlers Indigenizing the land, laying claim to what was not theirs.

Tuck and Yang’s Decolonization is not a metaphor provides an interesting touchpoint to identify a pattern of “settler moves to innocence.” What does this mean, and what is the pattern? As Indigenous peoples are literally removed from the land and disposed of its resources such as hunting and fishing, but also access to natural resource revenue, they are also figuratively removed and replaced with appropriated words, such as Sakaw. This is an instance that Tuck describes as “settler nativism” where setters attempt to “deflect” their identity by appropriating, in this instance, Indigenous words to be used as place names. There are many instances of this in Canada – itself a place name rooted in an Iroquoian language

This pattern is rooted in colonial and patriarchal power. The settler claims control the land through displacement and replacement of Indigenous peoples. In this specific instance, the Papaschase First Nation who occupied Reserve 136. Settlers, such as those on the Names Advisory Committee and City Council, then use Indigenous words (i.e. Sakaw) as place names to assuage feelings of guilt. This “move to innocence” allows for a feeling of moral resolution without addressing the ongoing colonial structures that led to the theft of land in the first place.

Current considerations

Place names matter. Place names are more than just labels on the nodes and paths that connect our city. They become part of our daily lives, representing how we view our city, and whether we see ourselves in a place. As a tool of settler colonialism, place names act as a way for settlers to claim a space previously occupied by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. While place names have become so much a part of our daily lives that we cease to think about them, we must. And we must do so through a lens that recognizes the past and uses that knowledge to create new policy and process.

With this lens in mind, Edmonton’s Naming Committee is seeking to push the process of place naming to include the voices of Indigenous Peoples within Treaty 6. Specifically, the Naming Committee has participated in several ad-hoc Indigenous-led naming processes; the Edmonton Wards, the renaming of the Oliver Neighbourhood to Wîhkwêntôwin, and the naming of the path Amisk Wacîw Mêskanaw (Beaver Hill Road) from Devon to Fort Saskatchewan, which runs through Edmonton.

These examples demonstrate a desire for Indigenous-led place naming processes to meaningfully engage with those who have been harmed by colonial naming practices. These processes are ad-hoc. There is no formal, policy-based mechanism to consistently involve Indigenous peoples in Edmonton place naming. This is an oversight and challenge within the context of the City of Edmonton as a colonial construct.

However, the Naming Committee is deeply interested in exploring and better understanding how Indigenous voices and process can be more formally included. While we are in the early stages of thinking though how we want to do this work, there is a commitment to reach out and engage with Indigenous scholars and policy makers in the Confederacy of Treaty 6 Nations, and other Nations within Treaty 6 Territory. The Naming Committee’s goal is to continue recognising the harms of past place naming practice, while trying to learn from the past and encourage inclusive naming processes.

Naming policy in Edmonton is not just about choosing words for maps and street signs—it is about examining who has the authority to define the city’s history, whose stories are centered, and whose presence is erased. As we reckon with the legacies of Treaty 6, the displacement of Papaschase First Nation, and the deep inequities in past naming practices, it becomes clear that names are not neutral but political. The challenge now is to expand who is acknowledged and to move beyond ad-hoc processes. By doing so, we can ensure that the names of our city not only reflect a more honest account of our past but also signal – however small – a commitment to a shared future.

Matthew Dance holds an M.A. in Geography from the University of Alberta. He works as a facilitator and is the volunteer Chair of the City of Edmonton’s Naming Committee. He lives and works in Edmonton.

Author’s note: I am deeply grateful to Drs. Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner for their invaluable guidance and constructive feedback during the preparation of this article. Their mentorship, generosity of time, and thoughtful comments have greatly enriched this work.

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[1] City of Edmonton Archives: Fonds RG-8-Series 81.4-Minutes and Agenda 1892-1991.

[2] Analysis completed by Matt Dance, using this dataset.

[3] Analysis completed by Matt Dance, using this dataset.

[4] City of Edmonton Archives, RG-17, Series 3.2, Box 2, File 19: Minutes and Agendas.