Children's books and the Politics of Naming

Coming from the public library a couple of weeks ago, I started reading to my five year-old what appeared to be a most inconspicuous picture book: “Franklin’s Canoe Trip” by Sharon Jennings.
The impression that this was another literary misdemeanor (the list of children's fiction considered 'canon' and written from a colonial stance is oh so long) started on the very first page, where Franklin voices his excitement about the trip because he “wanted to be just like the explorers he had learned about in school”. My reserved suspicions were confirmed when on the way to the river, Franklin discusses the trip with his friend bear in the anticipation that they might “discover a whole new country”. After a long paddling trip with their fathers, they encounter a crowded campsite; they roam the surroundings and end up finding a secluded cove. And then comes the oh-so-familiar colonial gaze:

“Franklin and Bear … explored the beach. They drew a map and named everything they found. ‘Let’s call this Bear’s Lagoon,’ said Franklin. ‘And this is Franklin’s Shore,’ decided Bear.”

Invoking the infamous politics of ‘naming’, a process in which dominant cultures attempted imposing their cultural framework onto Indigenous spaces, this seemingly innocuous children’s book emulates an imperialistic, colonial attitude, inexorably transforming the cultures and territories it met with – to say the least.1
Speaking from a non-aboriginal perspective, one should not tire to unambiguously acknowledge the need for redress and re-assertion of Indigenous status, cultures and peoples. And despite some success at re-naming and re-inscribing an Indigenous social reality within contemporary modern societies, we still encounter remnants of a politics and ideology that seeks to silence the ‘Other’ voice. But, of all animals, the author chose a turtle that sets out to discover part of Turtle Island …
Next time at the library, I’ll definitely circumnavigate the Franklin books, and rather go for a Robert Munsch!

1 For a discussion on the intricate process of naming, by colonial powers as well as by Indigenous peoples, see Rebecca Ann Bach, 2000. Colonial Transformations: The Cultural Production of the New Atlantic World. New York: palgrave.