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Events Schedule
Reclaiming/Renaming MIT
Home
Events Schedule
Reclaiming/Renaming MIT
Home
Events Schedule
Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Add to Calendar

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Add to Calendar

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Home
Events Schedule
Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Reclaiming/Renaming MIT

Feb 28–Mar 16
Local Tribal Leaders, MIT Indigenous Faculty, Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Claudia Tomateo, Catherine D'Ignazio
Venue:
Lobby 7
Lobby 7

Indigenous ways of living are often viewed as individual acts, yet everyday acts of resurgence can become organized and collective, wielding transformative power beyond individuals. Through these small acts lies the possibility of renewing our political and living practices beyond colonial systems.

Rename/Reclaim MIT is a project crafted and developed by two Indigenous graduate students and their academic advisor. This initiative emerged as a campus intervention for Indigenous Peoples' Day, featuring two actions that rename spaces on MIT's campus to honor Indigenous peoples and reclaim the campus as Indigenous space.

This collective, transformative exercise will debut at the festival as a public walking tour guided by local Indigenous leaders. Starting at Lobby 7 and ending at the Charles River boathouse with a flower ceremony, participants will receive five cards and an edited map inviting them to rename MIT spaces. Following a designated route through the Institute, people can place cards in empty name placard holders and document their work. Participants are encouraged to submit their documentation to an online folder for use in a final art exhibition and book.

Add to Calendar

Project Evolution

The two actions through which we have been reclaiming space and honoring Indigenous peoples over the last months are:

  1. Renaming rooms with names of tribes whose lands were dispossessed either through the Morrill Act or by occupation. We identified nameless rooms across campus and placed placards in empty spots. Renaming places in a colonial institution is a refusal to accept the erasure, banishment, disappearance, and death of Indigenous peoples and their homelands. In line with the practice of generative refusal, we use available spaces (name placards) to create anticolonial spaces.
  2. Replacing self-guided tour maps in Lobby 7. We offer an edited version of MIT’s campus map where buildings are renamed after Indigenous tribes affected by MIT either through the Morrill Act or by occupying their land. This alternative version allows visitors to experience MIT’s campus as an island of Indigeneity within colonial spatiality, inviting the public to explore and walk through MIT as an Indigenous space.

The morning after our first intervention, we encountered resistance—maps disappeared, and cards were removed. Yet we persist in renaming spaces with our paper cards. Indigenous resistance is not a single event but a continuous practice. While unknown members of the MIT community repeatedly remove cards and maps from Lobby 7, we continue our work.

Our cards' language evolves in response to the intervention. After weeks of finding torn cards beneath empty placards, we now explicitly state our purpose: "This space has been renamed to honor [name of the tribe] people."

Artist and Researcher Devora Barrera Gonzalez, an Indigenous woman descended from the Otomi/Hñähñu peoples, is a second-year master's student in city planning. A lawyer specializing in active transportation, she is redirecting her focus to Indigenous sovereignty through land management while examining how planning has served as a tool of colonization.

Artist and Researcher Claudia Tomateo, an Indigenous woman descended from the Quechua-Chanka people, is an educator, architect, urban designer, data visualizer, and PhD student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her research, grounded in Indigenous methodologies, examines how Indigenous data visualization contributes to the restitution of Amazonian worlds.

Academic Advisor and settler Catherine D'Ignazio is an associate professor of urban science and planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and director of the Data + Feminism Lab. A scholar, artist/designer, and "hacker mama," she focuses on feminist technology, data justice, and civic engagement.

Lobby 7

Rogers Building

7

77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Building location on the MIT Campus Map

MIT is committed to providing an environment that is accessible to individuals with disabilities. View the Accessibility Web App, designed for the MIT community to view accessible routes across the MIT campus. Please contact the event organizer directly for specific accessibility information or to discuss your needs.

Project Leadership

Project Co-lead and Conception: Devora Barrera Gonzalez, Indigenous woman descended from the Otomi/Hñähñü peoples

Project Co-lead and Lead Designer: Claudia Tomateo, Detribalized Indigenous descendant of the Quechua-Chanka people

Academic and Artistic Advisor: Catherine D'Ignazio, Settler

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2025-02-28
0:00
2025-03-16
23:55
77 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139
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