A federal panel has authorised renaming a Colorado peak after a Cheyenne girl who facilitated relations between white settlers and Native American tribes within the early nineteenth century, a part of a broader marketing campaign to exchange derogatory place names throughout the United States.
Mestaa’ehehe Mountain, which is pronounced “mess-taw-HAY,” bears the identify of and honors an influential translator often known as Owl Woman who mediated between Native Americans and white merchants and troopers in what’s now southern Colorado.
The renaming of what was often known as Squaw Mountain, 48 kilometers west of Denver, comes after US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland formally declared “squaw” a derogatory time period in November and mentioned she is taking steps to take away it from federal authorities use and to rename different derogatory place names. Haaland is the nation’s first Native American Cabinet official.
Thursday’s unanimous vote by the US Geological Survey’s Board on Geographic Names additionally comes as a part of nationwide efforts to deal with a historical past of colonialism and oppression towards Native Americans and different folks of coloration after 2020 protests calling for racial justice reform.
The phrase “squaw,” derived from the Algonquin language, might as soon as have merely meant “woman.” But over generations, the phrase morphed right into a misogynist and racist time period to disparage Indigenous ladies.
Earlier this 12 months, California’s Squaw Valley Ski Resort modified its identify to Palisades Tahoe. The resort is in Olympic Valley, which was often known as Squaw Valley till it hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics. Tribes within the area had been asking the resort to vary its identify for many years.
The renaming to Mestaa’ehehe Mountain was applauded by Teanna Limpy, director of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Office and a number one proponent of the change, in keeping with a Colorado Politics report.
“A derogatory name that is meant to diminish the sacredness and power of our women is no more,” Limpy mentioned in an announcement. “Mestaa’ehehe will be standing tall on that mountain for many generations to come, continuing to be a story of inspiration for all and perhaps a story that also inspires others to continue to learn other Indigenous cultures and languages.”
The identify change of the three,501-meter peak, situated within the Arapahoe and Roosevelt nationwide forests, is the primary of a number of geographic identify modifications being thought-about by a state panel.
Among them is 4,348-meter Mount Evans, named after John Evans, Colorado’s second territorial governor.
Evans resigned after an 1864 US cavalry bloodbath of greater than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne folks, most of them ladies, youngsters and the aged, at Sand Creek in what’s now southeastern Colorado.
