What's in a name?

This off-season I have been substitute teaching and recently completed a two-week stint with sixth graders who were assigned reading Sign of the Beaver — a coming of age story set in the interior of what would become Maine in 1769. The book, inspired by a true story of a young settler left for a summer on his own and befriended by a Native American, was written by Elizabeth George Speare and published in 1983. Speare, a two-time winner of the Newberry Medal, was well-known as a writer of historical fiction for children, yet her books are not without controversy — and this novel is contested for perpetuating Native American stereotypes through her use of the word s---- in a derogatory way toward native women. This blog post is not a diatribe punishing Speare for choosing to use particular words in her writing that have over time become acknowledged as offensive toward Native Americans by non-Indigenous people; it is instead a recognition that names — and the naming of people, places, and things — has impact.

Juliet, through William Shakespeare’s quill, famously declared “What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.” The bard was making the case that what something is called does not affect what the thing truly is, but when a name is an offensive ethnic slur, or a culturally significant name ignored, the differently-named rose can indeed have a radically different meaning. As the voices of Native American tribes have been more heard in the past few decades, and recognition by both the Canadian and United States governments at the intentional destruction of Native American culture through legislation like the Civilization Fund Act of 1819, society-at-large has begun to understand the havoc wrought by the negative stereotypes, name calling, cultural genocide, and belief in both the Myth of the Vanishing Indian and the supposed divine mandate of Manifest Destiny.

Many states, and even the United States federal government, have recognized that place names can convey or perpetuate negative meanings, or discount the voices of minority or marginalized groups. To “correct” just one of these historical oversights, a movement started to evaluate the many hundreds of mapped locations by groups of people with different cultural backgrounds and expertise to specifically rename places containing the word s----. It was an exercise in listening and learning for many involved, not just because some new names were collectively chosen to honor individuals, but because it represented collaboration across the table and not a decision made by the decree of one person or just one-side of the table. Many of these new names just became official in the past few years. If you're curious, the USGS map showing all the removals of the word s---- is linked here.

Here in Michigan, many of our place names derive from Native American names — including the name “Michigan” itself which comes from the Ojibwe word “mishigami” which means "large water" or "great lake.” Surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, it is a perfect name. Twenty-seven other U.S. states have similarly-derived names, including Ohio, Iowa, Idaho, and Connecticut. Ironically, Michigan’s most-famous Indian Agent, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft — who was fluent in Ojibwe, and even married to an Ojibwe — chose to use his empowered position when tasked with surveying duties to creatively make-up place names across the state that “sounded Indian” but weren’t. Many places already had names, but were renamed to either gain favor with then-President Andrew Jackson, like Calhoun county, or to sever the connection with existing Indigenous culture. In essence, this renaming established a blank slate where there was no longer a historical record of the original inhabitants who were being relocated — often by force— as settlers streamed in to the fledgling Michigan Territory and eventually the state after 1837. This intentional disconnect by name-erasure to various historic tribal lands has had long-lasting ramifications of many tribes still unable to regain Federally-recognized tribal status or reclaim historical lands and usage rights.

Schoolcaft was one man choosing to disregard long-established place names without discussion or input from all parties involved. History shows he’s not alone. Denali, North America’s highest mountain, has been called “Denali”, which means “the High One” or “Great One,” by the Interior Alaska’s Koyukon people for thousands of years; that is until a gold prospector in an 1896 New York Sun article referred to the massif as Mount McKinley in honor of William McKinley winning the Republican Presidential nomination, simply because he supported using gold over silver as the monetary standard. With McKinley winning the presidency, the name stuck despite Alaskans at the time, and even after attaining statehood in 1959, continued to request the mountain be officially renamed and recognized as Denali; Alaskans — and many others — never stopped asking for an official re-designation. In 2015, this most impressive peak's name was officially changed by President Barack Obama; the change was long overdue as many had been referring to the mountain as “Denali” for many decades out of deference to its native name (even the National Park surrounding the mountain was re-named “Denali” in the 1970s). Which brings us to 2025 and an Executive Order demanding we again ignore a culturally-appropriate and socially-accepted Native American place name in favor of being named after a President who never even visited the Alaskan Territory. This rose deserves to remain a “rose” in respect toward the Athabaskans who named it way before a gold digger did. The very least we should do is to respect and accept Indigenously-named places — and as our understanding of language and culture evolves, when any place name is no longer appropriate, for any number of reasons, we should then work together to choose anew.

 

PS: The image is from my visit to Denali in July of 2000 where we were lucky enough to see the peak during a sightseeing flight. The mountain is incredibly massive and your perspective is that you are going to collide with it it feels so close to the plane.

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