Truthful Naming: Why Noyo Bida instead

Some of us have a problem with the insincerity implicit in the rubrics often added to socially conscious organizations' programs, ‘We acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen from the [insert anglicized tribe name here] . . .’ But the naming of our market town to the north ‘Fort Bragg’ has always felt wrong. Increasingly, in realizing that the whole notion of property ownership (as opposed to stewardship) is destructive and antisocial, it is appealing to hold with some of our northern neighbors in the effort to change the city's name to Noyo Bida.

The preferred name ‘reaffirms the 10,000 year old historical Northern Pomo name for the area, Noyo Bida, The Fishing Place.’

In solidarity with The Noyo Bida Truth Project we quote: ‘our end goal [is] returning Indigenous languages in identifying locations of cultural significance related to our natural environment. We acknowledge the ecological diversity of our California Coast and encourage our true history to be preserved and acknowledged. To date the city of Fort Bragg is named for a Fort associated with the Mendocino Reservation where acts of genocide were committed against California tribal communities. The Fort was named for a general who had no connection to the Mendocino Coast, we have chosen to cease the glorification of Confederate General Bragg and the erasure of the Tribal communities.’

A few historical facts regarding Fort Bragg’s namesake, Braxton Bragg

The City is named for Braxton Bragg, a North Carolinian born into a slave owning family who had a slave accompany and serve him while at West Point and when he served in the Union Army in the Mexican War.

1. While pregnant with Braxton, Mrs. Bragg killed a free Black man for “impertinence.” (McWhiney)
2. While in the US Army he fought to displace the Seminoles from Florida to parts west Bragg married a wealthy woman in Louisiana, resigned his commission and established his own plantation of 1,600 acres with 105 enslaved men women and children to labor for him.
3. He joined “the elite ranks of the slave owning aristocracy.” earning “a net profit of $30,000” in 1859 (equivalent to $1 million dollars today).
4. Bragg wrote of slavery: “We have a large class of our population in subordination [which is] just and necessary.” (McWhiney, pg. 143)
5. When a Southern Senator beat the abolitionist leader of Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate with a metal tipped cane, leaving him bleeding and unconscious, Bragg wrote approvingly: “You can reach the sensibilities of such dogs only through . . . their heads and a big stick.” (McWhiney pg. 144)
6. Braxton Bragg, who had sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the US took up arms against his country as a traitor and became a Major General in the Confederate Army saying of secession: “Our course is just and we must triumph.”
7. As an individual Bragg was known to his contemporaries as a terrible bungler as a General, as well as a raging alcoholic.
8. When the Fort here was named for Bragg he was not yet a secessionist but he was, and had been all his life, a slave master.
9. A Union officer Colonel F. J. Lippitt, in Humboldt County in 1862 during the civil war suggested to his superiors in Washington renaming the Fort and removing Bragg’s name as a traitor writing “for it has too long borne the name of a traitor.” The idea of changing the name of the fort therefore is 150 years old and predates the naming of the town.
   
   [Above quotes are from two biographies of Bragg: (1) “Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man in the Confederacy” by Earl J. Hess, available at The Fort Bragg Library, and (2) “Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat” by Grady McWhiney and are borrowed from thenoyobidatruthproject.org/history.]