Why do some of our neighbors want to revisit the naming process?
“I have been a resident of our neighborhood for the past five years. Given that the ECCO name continues to refer to John Calhoun--a vociferous defender of slavery and an architect of ethnic cleansing against indigenous people--and that the name continues to be unacceptable to the Dakota Community, I strongly urge our neighborhood to drop the name.”
“Those that were not white, were kicked out and kept out, but that's not the entire story of this neighborhood. Loving stories stretch far before Calhoun and colonization, and into the future. Stories of love between people and land, when their skin matches its dirt too. If Calhoun had his way such stories wouldn't stretch either way. If he had his way, my family and I would not be cooking and dancing, lighting the fireplace or watching the birds here. I don't think we should have to say, nor reference his name, when we reference our home. I believe acknowledging and honoring our neighborhood's history before it was colonized is an important step to write out a better, more loving and just future for it.”
“The neighborhood name represents our neighborhood's image and values to the rest of the city (and country). After the devastating murder of George Floyd, our society's sensitivity to historical injustice has increased and that shift has amplified the pain of using a name aligned to our former neighborhood name East Calhoun. Our adjacent neighborhoods (South Uptown and West Bde Maka Ska) have already made this choice. For our neighborhood to retain ECCO, leaves us woefully out of step.”
“I bought a house in the neighborhood in summer 2019, and I was excited to learn that the East Calhoun name was up for a change. While I understand the difficulty in changing long-held names of beloved places — I still sometimes catch myself on the lake name, after running it for 13 years as ‘Calhoun’ — I know that names matter. Words matter. And changing the lake name to honor the indigenous people who first named it, rather than an irrelevant racist historical figure, was a good change. Thus, I was disappointed when the neighborhood voted to keep an acronym and pretend it didn’t still hold its original racist meaning.”
"We have an opportunity to honor the Dakota tradition of naming places after the places themselves, not after people whose legacies may shift over time. And we also have an opportunity to forge authentic relationships with Dakota people who still live in the area, whose presence has become much more prominent since the installation of the public art project at the gathering place. It is deeply important for us to understand that we live in a place that was once known as Heyata Otunwe, and to deliberately enter into that relationship."
FAQs
Who was John C. Calhoun and why is his legacy being questioned?
John C. Calhoun was a 19th century U.S. statesman and slave owner known for his racism and cruelty towards Black and indigenous people. He was a staunch supporter of the institution of slavery and the policy of Indian removal.
In 2017, the Minneapolis Park Board affirmed calls to reject Calhoun’s legacy and voted unanimously to recommend changing Lake Calhoun back to its original Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska. The lake and parkways surrounding the lake have now officially all been renamed.
Local neighborhoods and businesses have since followed suit and removed any reference to Calhoun from their names.
ECCO is no longer an acronym for East Calhoun Community Organization, so why doesn’t that disassociate our neighborhood from Calhoun?
For many, Calhoun will always be associated with the name ECCO, implicit in the first “C”.
At a racial justice rally on the lake in July 2020, speakers communicated that our name ECCO angered and alienated them by its continuing reference to John C. Calhoun.
We just voted on the neighborhood name in 2019, so why are we voting again?
The 2019 process preceded both the state Supreme Court’s ruling that Bde Maka Ska could indeed replace Lake Calhoun as official lake name and the murder of George Floyd, which catalyzed a national movement for racial justice.
Problems with the previous name change process have been identified, as the official neighborhood name was never clearly established prior to the vote.
In a January 2021 online survey of neighborhood residents, over 2/3 of the respondents indicated that they would like to change the name. Some who voted for ECCO in 2019 also expressed that they have since changed their minds.
Why is one option “East Bde Maka Ska” rather than “East Maka Ska”?
Joe Bendickson, a Dakota speaker, talked about the importance of including “Bde” in an interview on TPT’s Almanac in 2017 (watch here). He stated: “The Dakota language is very descriptive. When you say the words, you are describing a scene… The Dakota language describes the landscape, so I think it’s important we preserve the whole name.” To assume that “Bde Maka Ska” would follow the same place name norms as English would be to anglicize the Dakota language. We would like to ensure we are not inflicting new hurt and harm in the renaming process; instead, honor the Dakota people and their language with this potential neighborhood name.
RESOURCES
Op Ed in Star Tribune: Restoring lake's original name would reclaim heritage and unify. "Calhoun" doesn't fit. "Bde Maka Ska" does. By Carly Bad Heart Bull, Kate Beane and Tracy Nordstrom
Ted Talk: The Lasting Legacy of Place Names, Dr. Kate Beane
Minnesota Historical Society’s panel discussion (video): A Conversation on Reclaiming Bde Maka Ska
Minneapolis City Council approves the name change!
Update: July 29, 2021
The City Council holds the authority to change neighborhood names in Minneapolis. The ECCO Board sent a request to Ward 10 Council Member/City Council President Lisa Bender asking for her support in bringing the name change request through the City Council process. Attached to the request was the final report of our name change process. The request was unanimously approved at the Policy & Government Oversight committee meeting on July 13 and by the full City Council at their meeting on July 23, 2021. See the official documentation here.
The neighborhood board has approved a Name Implementation Committee that will begin the work of implementing the new name and changing the legal name of our organization.
The neighborhood name results are in!
Update: June 7, 2021
547 valid votes were cast, and we appreciate the engagement! 75% voted “yes” to change the neighborhood name. Our new neighborhood name will be East Bde Maka Ska, as it received 43.7% of the votes, followed by Uptown Lakeside with 37.5% and East Lakeside with 14.1%. 4.7% of voters did not select a name choice.
Note: We would like to share the unfortunate news that someone(s) attempted to tamper with this election by casting fraudulent votes. However, they did so in an clumsy and obvious manner, and we were able to set aside these fraudulent votes after a rigorous screening process and in consultation with City officials.
For more information on the voting process and background, read the contents of this webpage and also go to the Naming Committee’s webpage. The vote tabulation committee will be happy to answer questions, contact info@ecconeighborhood.org to initiate communication.
The next steps for our neighborhood will include initiating an official name change process with the City and changing our organizational documents and branding. We welcome your engagement in this process; please contact info@ecconeighborhood.org if you would like to be involved.
In April of 2021, the residents of ECCO
Neighborhood Association were invited to cast
their vote on two questions:
Would you like to change the neighborhood name from ECCO?
Please choose one of the following options: East Bde Maka Ska, Uptown Lakeside, or East Lakeside.
No matter your answer to question 1, please do answer question 2. If more than 50% of neighbors vote “no” on question #1, the neighborhood name will remain ECCO.
The voting period was from April 7-30, 2021.
BACKGROUND
In 2019, the East Calhoun Community Organization (ECCO), now named the ECCO Neighborhood Association, engaged in an extensive, consultative process to change our neighborhood name. It involved significant community outreach and three rounds of voting.
In retrospect, the ECCO Board feels that mistakes were made in this 2019 process.
There was a considerable amount of confusion about what our neighborhood name actually was prior to 2019. City documents referred to it as “East Calhoun,” but also simply as “ECCO.”
ECCO had also been in common use as the neighborhood name, along with East Calhoun. The ballot questions and options arguably failed to make this all sufficiently clear.
The initial question posed to the neighborhood--whether to change or keep the name “East Calhoun Community Organization'' as our neighborhood name--was thus flawed, but resulted in 63.7% of neighbors desiring a name change. The non-acronym option “ECCO” came in as one of the top two choices in a second round of voting, and the third and final ballot resulted in a narrow 52.6% victory for ECCO over East Bde Maka Ska.
Since that vote in late 2019, much has happened.
The state Supreme Court ruled that the name Bde Maka Ska could indeed replace Lake Calhoun.
Many area businesses and organizations have removed Calhoun from their names.
Perhaps most importantly, the murder of George Floyd has occasioned a national reckoning over the issue of racial inequality.
The ECCO Neighborhood Association Board issued a statement in June 2020 that the organization will “work against racial inequities and make our neighborhood more open and welcoming to all people.”
At a racial justice rally on the lake in July 2020, speakers communicated that our name ECCO angered and alienated them by its continuing reference to John C. Calhoun.
Many neighbors feel that ECCO still contains an implicit reference to Calhoun, and are aware that this causes pain for indigenous and Black people.
For these reasons, the neighborhood board has reopened the name change process, including an online survey and virtual town hall in January 2021, an informational mailer sent in March 2021, a virtual Neighborhood Name Information Session in March 2021, and a second mailer (including a new name ballot) to be sent out in April.
INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD
For thousands of years, the Dakota people have lived in Mni Sóta Makọce, the words used by Dakota to describe this land as the “Land Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds.” Although that area was much larger than our state’s current boundaries, the state of Minnesota got its name from the Dakota language and one of the areas important to that population is the land where our neighborhood rests today.
In the late 1820s, a village was established on the eastern shores of Bde Maka Ska, most of it within our current neighborhood boundaries, that was called Heyate Otunwe (village to the side) or Cloud Man Village. It was led by Mahpiya Wicasta, or Cloud Man. This settlement was an agricultural experiment that melded Native American ways with farming practices introduced by non-native settlers. Around 1830, the lake was renamed by surveyors after John C. Calhoun, a prominent politician and slaveholder from South Carolina. In 1834, the missionaries Samuel and Gideon Pond built a cabin in close to where we’re living today, which was the first European home on the lake. The Pond brothers were missionaries who wanted to convert the Dakota. It is here, in our neighborhood, that they developed the system of letters to be able to commit the Dakota language to paper. Later in the 1830s the Dakota left Cloud Man Village, and after the 1862 war, were expelled from the state.
NAMES UNDER CONSIDERATION
During the 2019 process, the leading neighborhood name options besides ECCO were East Bde Maka, Uptown Lakeside, and East Lakeside. The Board has decided to offer these names as alternatives to ECCO. We are supplying selected quotes our neighbors submitted to the online comment form and other submissions to the ECCO Board.
East Bde Maka Ska
“The name East Bde Maka Ska Neighborhood acknowledges the Dakota people and their importance to the area in the past, present and future--that is a step towards justice.”
“It only makes sense that our neighborhood would update our own name to match the lake, with a name that’s still clear about our location in the city. East Bde Maka Ska is logical. It has both meaning and history.”
Uptown Lakeside
“I love ‘Uptown Lakeside’ because it is accurate, descriptive, attractive and memorable. It usefully locates our neighborhood in Uptown - east of the Lake. It positively captures our remarkable lakeshore assets and the urban liveliness of our neighborhood. That name makes me grateful to live here and is inviting to people to come both visit and want to make this their home.”
“Uptown Lakeside has a nice ring to it and provides a good geographical description of where we live.”
East Lakeside
“East Lakeside is... short and sweet.”
"East Lakeside resonates with me because of its clear tie to our previous neighborhood names with the ‘East’ modifier, and relationship to the shores of Bde Maka Ska, which is what so many of us identify as the defining feature of our neighborhood.”