The Translingual Toponym
from Minnesota to Mnisota
Keywords:
decolonization, translation studies, toponymy, translingual poetics, poetryAbstract
In this essay I explore Layli Long Soldier’s use of code-switching to replace the toponym “Minnesota” with the Dakota word “Mnisota.” By drawing poetic attention to the names on the map the poet confronts the reader with a plurality which is suppressed by settler colonial place names, revealing Mnisota within the blind spot created by settler history and toponymy. Examining the poem through the lens of translation studies and literary cartography I show how the poem constructs an alternative image of place by estranging the language of empire and those discourses that are not in touch with the land. I contextualize the background against which Long Soldier writes by contrasting the ‘imperialist poetics’ that the poem condemns with other toponymic practices in which the place name is not considered finalized but ongoing, to be continually renewed by the people. I analyze the trope of grasses that runs through the text and discuss how the poet creates figures for speaker and audience to establish that the poem must be read as a Native speaker addressing a settler reader. I contextualize the poem within a broader range of decolonial scholarship regarding toponymy, history, and literacy in the Oceti Sakowin world.References
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