Voters in Squaw Valley and Fresno County, California, will weigh in on the question of who has the authority to change the names of places—locals or state and federal governments—in California’s primary election on Tuesday, March 5.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland declared that “squaw” is a derogatory term, and must be replaced in all federal geographic names, in a secretarial order issued Nov. 19, 2021.
“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,” said Ms. Haaland in announcing the order.
Less than a year later, “squaw” was removed from nearly 650 geographic features across the United States.
California also passed a law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 23, 2022, mandating the removal of the word “squaw” from all California geographic features and place names by 2025.
Reaction to the changes nationwide has been mixed. Some people agree that the word is offensive and should be replaced, while others prefer to maintain traditional place names.
The Bureau of Geographic Names (BGN) is leading the effort to change names deemed to be offensive. A part of the U.S. Geological Survey, BGN was created in 1890 to standardize geographic names throughout the federal government.
On Feb. 7, Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) and Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) introduced legislation to abolish it.
“A board that was originally created to uniformly name geographic locations throughout the United States has now been weaponized to rewrite our history,” Mr. Van Drew said.
Squaw Valley in Fresno County
The new name for “Squaw Valley” in Fresno County is “Yokuts Basin,” according to the list of official replacement names.Squaw Valley is an unincorporated area with about 3,500 residents. Upon learning 18 months ago of the federal government’s mandate to change its name, Nathan Magsig, chairman of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, held a meeting at a local library to discover what the community thought.
“At that meeting, it was overwhelming that the people who lived in the Squaw Valley region did not want their name to be changed, and they made [that] very clear,” Mr. Magsig told The Epoch Times. “If there was to be a change, they want to be the ones that get to pick their name.”
Many Native American women attended the hearing, Mr. Magsig said. “The last tribal chairwoman of the Wuksachi tribe, which is native to the Squaw Valley region, spoke, and she talked about how her ancestors helped to name that place Squaw Valley.”
Fresno County also mailed surveys to all the households in Squaw Valley. The survey asked if the residents wanted to change the name and offered several alternative names, including Yokuts Valley, Bear Mountain, Bear Valley, and others.
Of the 650 households that returned the survey, 87 percent said they did not want the name changed.
Fresno County officials shared the information about local preferences with the federal and state governments. It was ignored, Mr. Magsig said.
“To me, that is a huge overstep for the federal government to say that they’ve created this process when they ignore the people who are being impacted the most by this change.”
The federal government only has the authority to change names on federal lands and maps, Mr. Magsig explained. All the property in Squaw Valley is privately owned and not governed by federal decisions.
The new California state law, however, would apply.
“A non-elected board would be formed that could look at any name and deem it offensive,” Mr. Magsig said, “and they would have the authority to change it.”
Place Names Committee
When Ms. Haaland announced that “squaw” was offensive, she also issued another secretarial order creating a federal advisory committee within the National Park Service to solicit, review, and recommend changes to other geographic and federal land unit names.The Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names includes representatives from Indian tribes, tribal and native Hawaiian organizations, and civil rights, anthropology, and history experts, as well as members of the general public.
The committee last met on Nov. 14, 15, and 16, 2023 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Dr. Derek Alderman, professor of geography at the University of Tennessee, presented guiding visions and principles.
“The emphasis of place name reconciliation is reform,” he wrote. “It is not about erasing names and histories from the American landscape, but correcting the use of derogatory place names and addressing the harm they inflict upon discriminated groups along with how they damage wider possibilities for cohesive social relations in the nation.”
The committee forwarded a list of 513 potentially derogatory names to be considered for review. It recommended input from tribal, state, and local governments, federal agencies, and local communities to determine whether replacement names were needed, Gina Anderson, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Epoch Times.
Proposals and decisions for name changes in the previous 12 months are tracked via a Domestic Names Committee Action List, she said.
According to the current list, 23 place names containing the word “Negro” are considered derogatory. An additional 40 words are considered offensive, including “Stonewall” and “Dago.” Some consider “Dago” to be a derogatory term used to describe people of Italian descent.
A 4.8-mile-long stream that flows into Chignik Bay, Alaska, has been called Dago Frank Creek since at least 1929. The committee received a proposal to change it to Frank Creek. In researching it, the U.S. Geological Survey found that the creek could have been named after a local fisherman, Frank Sanguinetti.
Squaw Valley Versus Squaw Valley
California has two Squaw Valleys, one in Fresno County and the other on Lake Tahoe, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Mr. Magsig discovered that the two communities fought over which was the original Squaw Valley in the 1950s.A newspaper article from the time reported the views of Fresno County residents.
“These old-timers, one of whom is an Indian woman over 100 years old who declares this area was called Squaw Valley long before the white men came to California, object to their name being taken by the northern community near Lake Tahoe which is scheduled as the site for the next winter Olympics.
“Thirty-two Indians and other old-time residents have signed a petition asking the ‘other’ Squaw Valley to give up their name,” the report said.
Mr. Magsig said he doesn’t want history to be erased, and his goal in putting Measure B on the ballot, and reaching out to federal and state officials, is to get them to slow down.
“I do recognize that the term ‘squaw’ is offensive to some,” Mr. Magsig told The Epoch Times. “But I also recognize, there’s a lot of names that are offensive to people too.
“If we truly live in a nation where we have freedom and the ability to express ideas without having to worry about any kind of consequences, at the very least, the state and federal governments need to slow down and recognize, historically, what the people of the Wuksachi tribe and the people today want, and what history has to say. All that needs to be taken into consideration.
“Right now, I feel like the state and federal governments are not doing that.”
