This letter is a response to the recent article on the petition to remove John Evans’ name from campus in which President Morton Schapiro is quoted as saying, “I think sanitizing history is a mistake, I think taking people’s names off as if they never existed is a mistake and I think at an educational institution people should be educated. I think the worst thing would be is you expunge names, so I think either you keep a name and tell honestly the history, good and bad, or you take off a name but say this used to be called (something else).”

It’s ironic that President Schapiro’s rationale for keeping Evans’ name is that he doesn’t want to sanitize history. The history of this university has long been sanitized (read: whitewashed). The names of the people whose land this campus sits on have long been expunged. What’s especially frustrating is that part of campus, specifically Norris, was so close to rectifying this. Last spring, NAISA was approached by members of Norris’ social justice committee for input on renaming the Evans Room on the second floor of the student center. We were delighted to receive information in August that the room will be renamed as Potawatomi, in honor of the nation that inhabited these lands. However, we were told just two months later that the name of the room would remain Evans. This update was as confusing as it was infuriating. Somehow Norris staff came to the consensus that naming the room after Evans was problematic, agreed to reconcile the issue by renaming it and then decided that keeping Evans’ name was for the best. It seems that word came from somewhere higher up that Evans’ name should remain, which brings the administration’s commitment to reconciliation into serious question.

We agree with President Schapiro that historical erasure is not the answer, but it is important to consider what kind of history we are choosing to preserve and what kind we are choosing to ignore. To name a space after someone is one of the highest forms of honoring that person. By naming the alumni center, the Norris room or a professorship after Evans, the university is complying with a historical narrative that is one-dimensional, and oppressive to Indigenous communities. Naming a building after Evans doesn’t tell the honest history about him as President Schapiro suggests. Instead it idealizes the individual by illuminating his achievements, so that his past wrongs are forgotten.

But history is only part of the problem. The naming of spaces has a very real and contemporary effect for people on this campus. The debilitating effects of Indian mascots on American Indians are well-documented. Mere exposure to Native caricatures has measurable effects on self-esteem and self-identity for Native populations. Is it so hard to believe that a bust of a man who was implicated in the worst act of genocide in American history has similar effects? University of Washington professor Karina Walters had a very telling quote at an open forum during her visit to campus last week: “When you name a space after someone like Evans, what that communicates to Indigenous people is, ‘you don’t belong here.’” If Northwestern is truly committed to supporting Native students, faculty and alumni, then why does it allow this message to persist?

Signed,
Northwestern’s Native American & Indigenous Student Alliance