Patagonia is a vast region spanning southern Chile and Argentina. It is also the name of a multibillion-dollar outdoors company that has spent more than 50 years turning the region’s landscapes and mythology into a symbol of wilderness and adventure. Now, Patagonia Inc. is suing drag queen and climate activist Pattie Gonia for trademark infringement and dilution. But beneath all the legal questions lies a more complicated one: How did a U.S. corporation acquire the power to control the commercial meaning of a geographical area in the first place?

This episode is an invitation to think beyond whether Pattie Gonia’s name is too similar to Patagonia’s trademark and to instead delve deeper into who defines the meaning of a place and what happens when that power becomes privately owned.

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra is joined by Professor Alexandra Roberts, a scholar of trademark law at Northeastern University, to unpack the legal questions at the center of the case and the deeper ethical questions hiding beneath them.

Together, they examine the mechanisms that underpin trademark law, the colonial logic of commodification, corporate personhood and what it would mean if nature were to be granted similar rights. 

In this episode, we explore:

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