It does not take much to understand efforts to rename geographic features or places with offensive names. Simply imagine that the names in question insulted white people, denigrated prominent religious denominations or honored terrorists who killed U.S. citizens. Such names would be gone in a heartbeat.
Fort Lewis College professor, author and Herald contributor Andrew Gulliford detailed a renewed effort to clean up offensive place names in the Herald’s Weekend Edition (Feb. 12-13.) In that, he outlined the complexity of such a move, both in terms of cost and logistics and the need to decipher the meaning and intent of those names. It is not always simple.
Gulliford wrote specifically of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s creation of the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names and her intention of eliminating any use of the word “squaw” on federal lands. That is an example of what is at issue and what is at stake.
As Gulliford notes, offensive names do not necessarily suggest offensive intent. Some are offensive simply because times have changed and what was once common nomenclature is now considered inappropriate. Figuring out which names should be changed and which have historical significance sufficient to keep them is neither simple nor easy. But neither is it silly or a waste of time.
The word “squaw” has been around for about 400 years. It can reportedly be traced to an Algonquin word meaning simply “woman.” Over the years, however, its usage suggests that it could be most accurately translated as a slur. Haaland is correct in wanting to eliminate it.
There are those who would dismiss such efforts as political correctness or excess sensitivity. But it is no coincidence that the names they would defend are almost always offensive to racial minorities.
Changing Squaw Mountain, as Gov. Jared Polis would do, is one example. Mount Evans is another. A “fourteener” visible from the Denver area, the peak is named after a Colorado territorial governor who was also involved in the Sand Creek Massacre in which 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho – mostly women and children – were murdered for no reason.
The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is another example, but with a twist. It includes the Custer National Cemetery, named after George Armstrong Custer, and that is an embarrassment to the United States. Custer was not only engaged in what can now be seen as genocide but was clearly a fool.
The 19th century was the zenith of war on horseback and European military observers, men who knew what they were talking about, had described Native American warriors as the finest light cavalry in the world. Nonetheless, Custer took on a force of several thousand Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors with a couple hundred cavalrymen. It is too bad about his troopers, but Custer got what he had coming. Honoring him reflects well on no one.
As Gulliford pointed out, cleaning up the names of places and things will not be easy, cheap or without controversy. It nonetheless deserves to be done.
