True Left

The Department of the Interior recently ordered that the derogatory term “squaw” be removed from lakes, mountains, trails and other features on federal land — and the largest share of the cleanup will be taking place in the West.

In California, the sexual slur for Native American women appears on 87 places, according to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which has a search tool to look up place names in every state. Idaho is a distant second with 69 places identified by the now-banned term followed by Arizona with 68 places.

When variants of the name are included in a search (such as historical or local references that are not formally recognized) the frequency of the term squaw as a place name can almost triple in some states.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Native American from New Mexico, issued the order on Nov. 19, along with another directive establishing a process to review and replace other offensive names identifying the nation’s geographic features.

The orders, which continue an ongoing movement that goes back decades of eliminating derogatory names from landmarks, is expected to streamline and speed up what has usually been a lengthy, painstaking process to change the offensive name of a geographic site.

“Racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage — not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression,” Haaland, the first Indigenous woman to head the department, said in a press release. “Today’s actions will accelerate an important process to reconcile derogatory place names and mark a significant step in honoring the ancestors who have stewarded our lands since time immemorial.”
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While there is some debate over when the term squaw evolved from an Algonquian word for female to a sexual slur used by European fur traders and white settlers, Native Americans generally associate the word with today’s derogatory definition and have led efforts over the years to eliminate it from place names around the country.