A federal panel has authorized renaming Colorado Peak after a Cheyenne girl who facilitated ties between white settlers and Native American tribes within the early nineteenth century, a spot of desecration throughout the United States. It was a part of a wider marketing campaign to alter the names.
Mestaa’ehe Mountain, pronounced “mes-taw-hee”, names and honors an influential translator also referred to as the Owl Woman, who mediated between Native Americans and white retailers and troopers. in what’s now southern Colorado.
The title, then referred to as Squaw Mountain, 48 kilometers west of Denver, comes after US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland formally declared “squaw” a derogatory time period in November, and mentioned he wished to take away it from the federal authorities’s use and permit Taking steps to alter the title of others. Haaland is the nation’s first Native American cupboard officer with derogatory place names.
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 the historical past of colonialism and oppression in opposition to Native Americans and different individuals of colour following 2020 protests calling for racial justice reform. comes within the kind.
Derived from the Algonquin language, the phrase “squaw” might have as soon as merely meant “woman”. But over the generations, the time period morphed into an anti-feminist and racist time period to degrade indigenous ladies.
Earlier this yr, Squaw Valley Ski Resort in California modified its title to Palisades Tahoe. The resort is in Olympic Valley, which was referred to as Squaw Valley till it hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics. Tribes within the space had been asking for the resort’s title to be modified for many years.
Tena Limpey, director of the North Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Office and a number one proponent of change, recommended the renaming of Mesta’hehe Mountain, as Colorado Politics reviews.
“A derogatory name meant to undermine the purity and power of our women is no longer there,” Limpey mentioned in a press release. “Mestayehe will stand on that mountain for many generations to come, continuing to be a story of inspiration for all and perhaps a story that inspires others to continue learning other indigenous cultures and languages.”
The title change to the three,501-metre peak, situated within the Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forests, is the primary of a number of geographic title adjustments being thought-about by the state panel.
Among them is the 4,348-metre Mount Evans, named after the second territorial governor of Colorado, John Evans.
Evans resigned in 1864 after the American equestrian bloodbath of greater than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne individuals, most of them ladies, youngsters and the aged, in Sand Creek in what’s now southeastern Colorado.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
