I got an email earlier today that asked what I meant when I said “so-called” and “known as” before names of this country and individual states in my latest article. This is not the first time I’ve been asked this so I figured I should tweet about it:

Personally, I use phrases like this because I personally do not believe in the borders that exist in settler colonial countries. The land that is the so-called United States is stolen land. It was taken from communities and continues to be abused by the extractive culture...

...colonization has allowed to develop. My motivation in using these terms before proper nouns that we as a culture have been taught are the ONLY names of these areas is to provoke thinking in those who read my work. Do you know whose land you occupy?

Do you know the trauma that occurred so that state could come into the ‘union’? Do you know that those traumas still radiate and are continually added to with every new “hip” (aka gentrificated) area and pipeline project?

The histories we’ve been taught and the news we’ve consumed have left out so many details in regards to the land and I will always, ALWAYS write in a way to motivate others (and myself!) to continually question these one dimensional rhetorics and patriotic ideals.