Clark’s nutcracker: What’s in a name?

A reader recently asked me why I haven't included Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) in my Field Guides to Dumb Birds.

The truth is that I had planned to include this bird in my second field guide, The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World – in fact, the research was done, the entry was written, and I had completed a really nice illustration.

In the end, I decided to remove it from the manuscript just prior to publishing. Not because of the bird, or what I had written about, but because of who the bird was named for:

William Clark. (You know, the Clark half of the Lewis & Clark Expedition.)

Growing up in the United States, we were taught about the daring and courage of these two intrepid explorers, and the importance of their expedition to the nation’s future.

But while American History classes in the 80's taught us about the idea of "manifest destiny" (which sounds much better than "unchecked colonial exploitation") it also left out a few important details about our national heroes.

Like, for instance, they totally failed to mention to us that in addition to being an intrepid explorer, William Clark was an unabashed slaveholder who even brought one of his slaves along with him on the famous expedition across the continent.

After Clark "discovered" the western United States, he went on to be appointed a brigadier general who fought for the United States in the American Indian Wars, and was later appointed as Governor of the Missouri Territory. During this time he was also the ex officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs, a job which largely consisted of pandering to white expansionists by displacing native peoples from their land and attempting to eradicate their language, culture, and religion.

Today, the American Ornithological Society has quietly begun the process of renaming many birds based on their physical characteristics, rather than by who first described them. This makes more sense from a descriptive perspective anyway, and is a process that is slowly beginning to take hold in many branches of natural science.

And it's not just the professional scientific community, this trend is growing in the birdwatching community as well; recently the Seattle Audubon Society announced that they have renamed themselves Birds Connect Seattle, in order to promote inclusivity and to shed the association with John James Audubon (a lot of people know Audubon was a committed ornithologist who was great at painting birds, but may not have heard that he was also an anti-abolitionist who owned, who bought, and sold African American slaves.)

Not everyone likes these changes, but it feels right to me that naturalists and nature lovers promote inclusivity and start the work of tearing down old frameworks and rejecting what is toxic and hurtful. Pull down the flags, topple the statues, and, yes, rename the birds to reflect what makes them unique.

It is slow going, in part because of the consideration that must go into a process like this, and also, it turns out, because of the number of birds that have been named after racists. (I’m just going to put it out there: American Ornithological Society, if you need any help renaming birds, I do have some experience with this and would be willing to help…)

Anyway, none of this is the nutcracker's fault, of course, and from my point of view he does really deserves to be in one of my upcoming books. Believe me, he could stand to be taken down a peg or two.

Still, I'd rather wait until Clark's Nutcracker has been renamed, and then take this pilfering passerine apart based on his flaws, and his flaws alone. I’d rather not swim in waters muddied by association with a corrupt slave-owing land-thief.

William Clark had his time, and now it’s time to move on.