Why Should We Change the Name?

Lewis & Clark College is a beautiful school, home to many different kinds of individuals. As a liberal arts college, most of what we learn here is very progressive and fashion forward in political and social perspectives. Although, one thing hinders such a theme for this school and even deters people from it… The name! Everyone knows of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, the "Western Expansion" if you will. Yet few see this in the connotation of colonization, violence, and oppression. Before our endless population and expansion into the West, individuals, families, tribes, communities thrived here, this was their home. We cannot let genocide, the theft of land, the theft of culture be swept under a rug. We cannot appreciate this land we dwell and learn on without acknowledging the people who were here long before Columbus set foot on the shores of what is now the Bahamas. We need to be loud, we need to be the voice of the people who weren't heard, of the people who were silenced. The Equity and Inclusion sector of the Lewis & Clark website states, "We honor the indigenous people on whose traditional and ancestral homelands we stand: the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, and Watalala bands of the Chinook; the Tualatin Kalapuya; and many other indigenous nations of the Columbia River." Yet the school is still named after the two white men who set off to colonize the area? Our school name does not measure up to the ideals we have as a liberal arts college. More is needed than a meager land acknowledgment. We need to recognize and appreciate the people, cultures, and values of the ones who were here before us. We need not to glorify the Western Expansion through naming a beautiful school after people who were directly involved in the pain that was inflicted on so many innocent people. We need change, a name change.