Racist and offensive place names- The movement to rename mountains, rivers and valleys

My name is Paul Spitler. I'm the senior legislative policy manager at the Wilderness Society and we're here today to talk to you about the latest efforts to remove racist and offensive place names from our public lands. It's a really exciting topic and we have a lot of information to present including how you can get involved and we have some of the nation's preeminent leaders in this subject. So without further ado, let's begin. I want to start by acknowledging and thanking our co-sponsors of this event, the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and the Natural History Museum. We appreciate their participation and leadership today. I'd like to read the Wilderness Society's land acknowledgement statement. It's a value that we share and we try to put it into practice in all of our meetings. The Wilderness Society recognizes Native American and Indigenous peoples as the longest serving stewards of the land. We respect their inherent sovereignty and self-determination and honor treaty rights including reserved rights that exist off reservations. We acknowledge the historic and ongoing injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples and are committed to being more conscientious and inclusive in working with Indigenous peoples to advance the establishment of trust and respect in our relationships. We seek the guidance of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples to effectively advocate for the protection of culturally significant lands and the protection of language and culture. We strive to support actions that respect the priorities, traditional knowledge, interests, and concerns of Native American and Indigenous peoples to ensure a more just and equitable future. So before we begin, I just want to set an intention for today's discussion. This event is really meant to help people better understand the issue of offensive place names on our public lands. We know this can be an emotional topic for some people and we're all coming at this topic from different places, different experiences, and different levels of understanding. The goal today is to facilitate a conversation and to share information and perspectives and ensure that our panelists feel safe speaking honestly and candidly. And we want to foster a safe space for audience members to ask questions. So with that in mind, I'd ask everyone to maintain an open mind, to listen, and to learn. We will have the chat function open for the audience to participate. However, we won't tolerate offensive comments and if we see a pattern of offensive comments in the chat, we'll remove offenders from the chat and may be forced to turn off the chat. We'll also be taking questions from the audience and ask that you just use the Q&A button. We won't be pulling questions from the chat. So if you want to ask a question, go ahead and use the Q&A section and we'll try to get to as many of them as possible. So before I introduce our panelists, I want to share a couple videos from two champions in Congress. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Al Green feel passionately about changing offensive place names in the United States. They introduced the Reconciliation and Place Names Act, which would address racist and offensive place names across the United States. And we really appreciate their leadership and are grateful to hear from them today. Hello, friends. This is your Congressman Al Green. It is my distinct pleasure to join you today and share more about the Reconciliation and Place Names Act. Public lands are part of the fabric of America that are meant to welcome people of all walks of life. However, thousands of geographic features, including national forests, wilderness areas, and monuments have offensive names that celebrate people who upheld bigotry and racism. Names that celebrate white supremacy, slavery, and atrocities committed against Native Americans, as well as other racial and ethnic groups, must not be included on the names of geographic sites or structures built into the national landscape. These names pay homage to an era of invidious yet lawful discrimination in our country. This, my dear friends, is why I, together with Senator Elizabeth Warren, introduced the Reconciliation and Place Names Act. I'd like to extend a hand of friendship and my sincerest gratitude to the Wilderness Society and their National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers for their efforts to bring awareness to this exceedingly important issue. Again, this is your Congressman Al Green. Thank you for having me. Hello, everyone. I am glad to have a chance to join all of you today. Thank you to the Wilderness Society and National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers for your important work and for hosting this webinar. Public lands are the fabric of this country, and they are meant to welcome everyone. But thousands of geographic features, national forests, wilderness areas, monuments, and other public lands have offensive names that celebrate people who have upheld slavery, committed unspeakable acts against Native Americans, or led Confederate war efforts. These should not be included in the names of any national sites. So that is why I have worked with my good friends, then-Representative Deb Haaland, when she was serving in the House, and then-Representative Al Green, to introduce the Reconciliation in Place Names Act. I am grateful for their partnership in this fight. I was particularly glad that Secretary Haaland and the Department of Interior have already taken action to implement many of the provisions that we laid out in the Reconciliation in Place Names Act. It is beyond time to stop honoring the ugly legacy of racism and bigotry in this country. I won't stop fighting to rename racist and offensive place names. And I want to thank Representative Green, Secretary Haaland, and all of you for your partnership in this work. Let's get this done. Great. How could that not be inspiring for all of us? So before we introduce our panelists, let's do some level setting with a couple of poll questions for our audience. The first question is, do you know of a mountain, river, valley, or other feature with an offensive name near where you live? Second question is, the Department of the Interior is taking action to rid public lands of one particularly offensive racial and sexual slur targeting Indigenous women. How many geographic features in the United States bear this name? So we'll let everyone weigh in on these poll questions as I introduce today's panelists. Our first panelist is Valerie Grusing. She's the Executive Director of the National Association for Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. She's committed to protecting culturally important places that perpetuate Native identity, resilience, and cultural endurance through support, guidance, and advocacy of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. She's passionate about protecting, passionate about advocating for, and elevating Native interests and voices in protecting and revitalizing Native cultures and places. Valerie holds a B.A. in History from North Carolina State University, an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in Coastal Resources Management from East Carolina University. Maria Gibbons is an enrolled member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe in northern Idaho and co-founder of Tahoma Peak Solutions. Maria has worked in the United States Senate for the National Congress of American Indians and for the Native American Agriculture Fund. She has a Master's Degree in Sustainable Food Systems from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and American Indian Studies from the University of Washington. Bonnie McGill is an Ecosystem Ecologist, David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow, and Science Communication Fellow at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She's the lead author of the report, Words Are Monuments, Patterns in U.S. National Park Place Names Perpetuate Settler Colonial Mythologies Including White Supremacy, published in People and Nature earlier this month. Bonnie currently works with rural communities on climate change communication. Fred Mosqueda is the Arapaho Language and Culture Program Coordinator for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Fred also represents the southern Arapaho as their Sand Creek Massacre and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act representative. As a fluent Arapaho speaker, he worked to support his tribe in preserving their culture, language, and traditional practices and ceremonies. And I can also tell you from personal experience that Fred is a terrific storyteller. I want to thank all of our panelists for being here today, and before we dive into the questions for them, let's close the poll and look at the results. So, on the first poll question, 74 percent, almost three quarters of you, know of an offensive place name near where you live. I mean, that is a shocking number. On poll question two, good job to the 42 percent who guessed 664 places. That's the correct answer, giving this term the dubious distinction of being the most commonly applied racial slur in American place names. And despite decades of efforts to eliminate the use of this offensive term, it still exists on hundreds of places from Maine to Alaska, Florida to Washington. So, if you're curious as to where these places are located, TWS mapped them, and that link is in the chat. And later, we'll get into more details about what the Department of the Interior is doing to eliminate this term and tell you how you can help get rid of it. So, now let's go to our panelists. Let's start with a question for Maria. Maria, we're all here to learn about the movement to change offensive place names, so let's set the stage for today's discussion. Why is this work important, and what's at risk if we don't act? Yeah, I think this work is so important because words are important. How we talk about things are so important. I grew up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I'm a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe, and the best word that you mentioned in the poll, there were a number of places in and around where I grew up that use that word that, you know, is a slur towards me as a Native woman. And so, that was definitely at play when I was growing up as a young person and is for current Native people today. So, it's really important. You know, a lot of people might be saying, aren't there other important things to talk about? But the way we talk about Native people is so important because the biggest issue that a lot of Native people face is the threat of invisibility, people not knowing that we're here still. And racist and offensive place names really plays into that, and using language that honors, actually honors Native people, is a way that we can make sure that Native people aren't invisible anymore. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. If I could ask all the panelists to put your cameras on, that would be terrific. Maria, thanks for that. Thanks for that background. That's super helpful, and this feels like a good segue into the report that was just released early this month called, Words are Monuments, Patterns in U.S. National Park Place Names Perpetuate Settler Colonial Mythologies Including White Supremacy. Bonnie, can you tell us about this report and what you looked into, why you looked into it, and what you found? Yes. Thank you for that question, Paul, and for inviting me to be on this panel of esteemed colleagues. I first want to say that I'm joining you today from the area now known as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is within the ancestral lands and waters stewarded by the Haudenosaunee people, especially the Seneca, as well as the Monongahela, Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandotte, and Osage peoples for many generations today and into the future. Getting back to the paper, my co-authors slash accomplices in this four-year project are several fellow ecologists, I think a few of whom might be tuning in today, Drs. Steph Burrell, Grace Wu, Kurt Ingeman, Jonathan Bernder-Ujuad Kosh, as well as Dr. Nachi Barnd, an expert in ethnic studies and cultural geography, and author of the book, Native Space, Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism. My co-authors and I started this project knowing that settler colonizer injustices can be invisible, like Maria said, to Western trained scientists and other settlers who look like me. We set out to use our skills as Western trained scientists to hold up a different lens for Western scientists and national park visitors, 96% of whom are white, to more clearly see connections between settler colonialism on past and present, place names, and indigenous sovereignty. Our methods were rather simple. Research the origins of place names on 16 national park visitor maps. Categorize name types, count name types, and then look for patterns among the parks. In case you're wondering, the 16 parks we studied were Acadia, Big Bend, Canyonlands, Crater Lake, Cuyahoga Valley, Denali, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, Hawaii Volcanoes, Mesa Verde, Theodore Roosevelt, Wrangell, St. Elias, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. Their maps contain a little over 2,200 place names. Of those names, less than 5% of name features bear traditional indigenous place names. These are place names like Denali, meaning the tall one, and Creokon, a name that has been in use for millennia. Another 10% of place names are words or names from indigenous languages that were appropriated. Examples of a settler or settler colonizers taking a word, often without consent, and in some cases misusing it, such as Yosemite. I think I might have just given away a poll question, so if you're listening, you'll get a poll question right in a minute. 10 place names were racial slurs, including the S word. We found 21 place names that commemorate individuals who supported racist ideas, but we found no evidence recorded for violence. For example, Hayden Valley, in what we now call Yellowstone, commemorates Ferdinand Hayden, a geologist who called for the forced assimilation, or failing that, extermination of Native Americans. The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe wrote to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names in 2017, referring to Hayden Valley. If, as Wallace Stegner suggested, the world's first national park was America's best idea, how do you reconcile having the main thoroughfare of America's best idea named to honor an individual who proposed the extermination, the genocide, of the land's original inhabitants? The sovereign tribal nations of Yellowstone have formally proposed changing the name to Buffalo Nations Valley." My last finding that I'll share from the report is that, so I just mentioned 21 places commemorating racist individuals. We found fully 52 place names commemorating individuals that perpetrated physical racial violence, often acts of anti-Indigenous genocide, including Mount Doan in Yellowstone. Our aim for this project is, in part, to demonstrate that these place name problems are not random one-off occurrences, but a systemic issue requiring a systems level response, such as Secretary Holland's task force and future task forces to address more than just derogatory names. These names are about more than people's feelings being hurt or people being offended. They're part of the systems that perpetuate white supremacy and contribute to invisibility that Maria mentioned. The last thing I'll say is our aim is also not just to point out what is wrong, but to help Western scientists and national park visitors build more awareness of place names and their role in reconciling the U.S. history of settler colonialism. Restoring traditional Indigenous place names or applying new Indigenous place names to places in national parks and across the U.S. could be a symbolic step toward acknowledging Indigenous sovereignty over and immense knowledge of these lands and waters. And I'll stop there. Thanks. Thanks, Bonnie. Amazing work, troubling findings, but appreciate you bringing all this forward because with information like this, we can help decision makers make better decisions about these places. So, Maria and Bonnie talked a little bit about the scope of offensive place names on public lands and how it creates an unwelcoming environment on public lands. Valerie, can you talk about the association's involvement in offensive place names work over the years and talk about the new guide that you helped release called the Guide to Changing Offensive Place Names in the United States? Sure. Thanks, Paul. And thanks again for the opportunity to collaborate on that and to be here today. It's a real honor. Valerie Grusing, the executive director of NAFCO, the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers. It's based in Washington, D.C. This is my home office in Silver Spring, Maryland. This is the ancestral homeland of the Piscataway and the Nacotchtank peoples who, of course, are still here. And I myself am descended from colonizers of central North Carolina. So, remain eternally grateful and humbled for the opportunity to do this work and to be here with you today. I've been with NAFCO in this position for a short time, since the beginning of 2019. And I see some of our members here today. So, a special hello and welcome to you all. Prior to that time, I was on the agency side working with cultural resources, tribal consultation, and historic preservation at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So, while I was there, I actually saw firsthand the need for systematic change away from the colonial methods and thought processes, which does include the need for place name changes. In my work with Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, or TPOs, I've seen firsthand the impact that these colonial frameworks can have on tribes across the country. Racist and offensive place names are certainly one of the most visible examples of this. I wanted to mention what are Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, for those who might not know. TPOs are officials designated by federally recognized tribal governments who protect culturally important places that perpetuate Native identity resilience and cultural endurance. TPOs assume the duties of State Historic Preservation Officers on tribal and trust land, and that's grounded in sovereignty, self-determination, traditional knowledge, and cultural values. They conduct project reviews for everything, including tribal schools, and roads, and health clinics, and housing, as well as for energy and infrastructure development, anything that's federally funded or permitted. An important part of the work of many of them, They Wear Many Hats, is also creating their tribes oral history programs and operating tribal museums and cultural centers where they have them, as well as leading revitalization of cultural traditions and Native languages. Through this work, TPOs are involved in working to restore traditional place names and to remove offensive names that, at their core, were an effort to erase tribal nations from the map and from our collective history. So when Paul and the Wilderness Society offered NAFPO the opportunity to work together on the Place Names Guide, we were excited to join the project. Our organization is solutions focused, and we loved the approach the guide provides for real change right now. It's step-by-step instructions empower people everywhere to make real change by giving them the tools needed to effectively work to correct racist and offensive place names. This is an opportunity that is inclusive and offers a real productive way for those who want to lend their time and talents to changing the face of this nation for the better. And for tribes, this is an act, as I said, of sovereignty and self-determination and empowerment that is a fundamental part of our mission. Great. Thank you, Valerie. Great to have been in a partnership with the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers for the past few years, and they're doing really important work. So Valerie touched on the importance of some of this work happening on the ground, which leads perfectly to hearing from Fred about the work that's taking place in Colorado to rename Mount Evans. Fred, can you talk a little bit about this work, how it came about, and how it's going? Yes, I can. Approximately about two years ago, a little two and a half years ago, the opportunity came to rename Mount Evans. And as you know, the territory of Governor Evans was instrumental in a massacre that dealt with the Cheyenne-Arapaho people. And so when this opportunity came up, well, we jumped on it, but we didn't know what we was doing. So we kind of went off at the wrong tangent, but Paul got a hold of us, and he straightened us out on how to go about renaming a site such as Mount Evans. So he asked us, well, what name would you want to use? So being a member of two tribes here, Cheyenne-Arapaho here in Oklahoma, we had to get a name that would pertain to both tribes, you know, because we are considered as one tribe in the eyes of the government. So I went to my cohort, I always call them, the Cheyenne coordinator, who is Chester Whiteman, and I told him, we have an opportunity now to rename this mountain. I said, but we need a name, a real good name that pertains to both tribes, that will have a meaning to our people. And so we was talking about it one day, and our offices is just right across the hall from each other. And so I left his office and came back to mine, and all of a sudden he just hollered across the hallway, blue sky. And I thought, so I got up and walked in there, and he said, we have a ceremony, a yearly ceremony of the renewal of all life that the Southern Cheyenne called blue sky. And he said, your people are known as the blue sky people. He said, let's use that name. So I called, I emailed Paul and I said, what do you think of mountain blue sky? And Paul said, you know, he liked the name, and he said, let's do it. So Paul and I co-authored a petition that we submitted to rename the mountain, Mount Blue Sky. It's a very, very beautiful name. That's awesome. Thanks, Fred. Can you just say a little bit more about, well, first, what's wrong with the name Mount Evans? I don't think everyone on this call will know who Governor Evans was. And can you just talk a little bit about like, how's this process going? What's been challenging about it? And where do things stand? And we're going to talk a little bit later about how people can help help in this effort. Sure. Back in 1864, the territorial governor was Governor Evans. And at the time, you know, the tribes were being kind of moved out of the Denver area because gold had been found in 59 there. And then that there was that the territory was trying to become a state. And it kind of seemed as though Governor Evans and his military leader, who was Colonel Chivington, they wanted to make a name for themselves so they could become higher in politics. That was their ambition. And they knew they had to do something. So what they did is they looked at, what can we do? And we was considered a problem at that time, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, because we lived in the central part of Colorado on the eastern end of the front range, and eastern Colorado is where we lived. So he had to get rid of us. And so he started out by putting out proclamations to split the tribes. And he did this by saying all good Indians should report to a certain area to draw their rations. He sent the northern Arapahos to Fort Laramie. He sent the northern Cheyennes to Fort Robinson. He sent the Cheyenne Arapaho tribes to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas River. So this separated us. And then his second proclamation said that if you find any Indians not close to a fort, you have the right to kill them and claim all their property as a reward for you for killing them. So it was like, you know, they put out a bounty on us. And so we had certain leaders in our tribes who wanted peace. They realized that we couldn't make it the way things were going. You know, the game was going, there was no more buffalo. We were being pushed further and further away from our homelands. And so they began to try to meet with the military leaders to find out how we can have peace. And so the southern Cheyenne Arapahos, they met with Major Wynkoop down in Fort Lyons. And so he knew that he didn't have the right to make peace with them, but he wanted to help them. So he set up a meeting with Governor Evans and Colonel Chevington, which became known as the Camp Well Accords or Council. And although Major Wynkoop had good ideals, good intentions, what he basically did was give Governor Evans and Colonel Chevington a way to win a military campaign. So he brought the chiefs, the Cheyenne Arapaho chiefs, to Camp Well there in Denver to meet with the governor and Colonel Chevington. And basically, they just kept on saying they didn't make really no chance for them to have peace. They just told them where to go. They told them, you will go down to Fort Lyons. From Fort Lyons, you will go to Sand Creek. You will camp there. You will receive rations there. So soon as the chiefs left and started back home, Colonel Chevington organized his military command, and they basically followed the same path that the chiefs took down to Fort Lyons. In November 29, 1864, they attacked that peaceful village. It was even to the point where they told Chief Black Kettle, if you hear the military coming, they had given him a flag. Put this flag up and also put up a white flag of peace. This was done, but it didn't do any good. And so the massacre happened. We lost many people, many chiefs, many women and children and elders at this massacre. And this is the reason why the name Mount Evans is so, it brings sorrow to the Cheyenne Arapaho people. It brings a distaste because of the betrayal that he did to the Cheyenne Arapaho people. There was nothing truthful in what he did. And so this is the reason why when the opportunity came to talk about changing that name on that mountain, we were all for it. And the thing is that it's been a hard and long fight to get this name changed. Paul has helped us throughout this whole battle. And we also have a coalition called the Mista'ahit coalition. And so the hardest thing is to convince people that live in the area that they should change this name. There's still people that want to continue with this name Mount Evans. They're still one of them. They want to change it to represent the same family, but a different one. So it's been hard trying to convince the locals to change these names. And they continue to fight us over these names. They want to continue to call those names that don't bring good thoughts to the Cheyenne Arapaho tribe. But we'll continue to work with them to change that name. And again, blue sky is just so beautiful. That's what it should be. Thank you. That's a thank you, Fred. Boy, that is a powerful story. Of course, a crushingly sad tale. And boy, a persuasive argument for why we need to be addressing the legacy of these racist and offensive names. Maria, I'd like to ask you, some people say that changing place names is part of the cancel culture, and we're trying to erase our history. I know Fred's heard this in Colorado as well. What do you say to that? I think it's the opposite of cancel culture. I think it's restoring it to more traditional native culture. I mean, Fred's story and the story of the Cheyenne Arapaho people is so powerful because that mountain has been their mountain for tens of thousands of years. And the Cheyenne Arapaho people have a connection to that place much longer than Mr. Evans's lifetime or his family's lifetime in that place. And so it's only right to restore it to the original name, and at the very least, to remove the racist and offensive name. I think that there's so much to be said about cancel culture, and so much that we don't need to talk about here. But I really think that this is the work that should have been done so much longer ago. And now we finally have a bit of momentum to actually discuss it. This has been an issue for my whole lifetime, for my mom's whole lifetime, for my grandparents' whole lifetime. And we're finally at a stage where we can actually address it. And this isn't canceling anybody's history. It's restoring history. It's shining light on everyone's connections to land. And I think that's just really important to uplift that, to uplift stories like the Cheyenne Arapaho's connections in the Front Range of Colorado. I used to live in Colorado, in Boulder, when I was in grad school. And that story needs to be told a lot more. People need to know that. I'm here in the Seattle area, and people need to know about how people were removed from this land that I'm on right now. And those stories just need to continue being told. And it's 100% not cancel culture. It's storytelling. Yeah, thank you, Maria. Well said. So we want to get to some audience questions. Again, use the Q&A feature to submit a question, if you have a question for any of our panelists. Before we get to those, Valerie, I mean, what Maria and Fred were talking about really is a kind of lead into an important question about how does this effort to change offensive names fit into the broader effort by tribes to secure equity and justice regarding the management of their ancestral homelands? Great question, Paul. And I want to link it to our mission statement, actually. Connections to cultural heritage sustain the health and vitality of Native peoples, and of all peoples, really. I think it's something that a lot of us take for granted, having those connections. I think it's important to understand the emotional and the spiritual significance that landscapes have for Indigenous peoples. One of our members has phrased this in a really powerful way when he says that the landscape to a Native person is like the pages of a Bible to a Christian. And so the effort by tribes to secure equity and justice regarding the management of their ancestral homelands, it runs that deep. So when a place name accurately reflects the Indigenous peoples who hold it sacred, it literally puts them back on the map. It acknowledges and helps make them whole after hundreds of years of being erased. And when this healing happens, we see communities thrive. The environment is enriched through traditional cultural methods of management and stewardship, and that's something we all benefit from. The impacts of tribal efforts to secure equity and justice regarding the management of their ancestral homelands has far-reaching positive impacts for all of us, both cultural and natural. Great. Well said. Thank you. So we're going to get to a few audience questions. Before we do, let's do another poll. And Bonnie, if you're paying close attention, gave answers to both these questions in her presentation. So the first question is, of the 2,241 place names on the 16 National Park Visitor Maps that were studied, how many commemorate a Black person? And the second question is, of the 16 studied national parks, how many place names commemorated an individual who perpetrated physical or racial violence, often anti-Indigenous genocide? So we'll leave those poll questions open for a moment while we address some audience questions. So the first question is, and Maria, I think I'll address this one to you. The Department of the Interior is renaming one particularly offensive name. And we've received a few questions about why is this term offensive? Can you explain why the term is offensive? And can you also say why we're not using the term on this webinar? Yeah, I saw some of those questions and definitely wanted to answer that. So the S-word, as I'm calling it, as we've heard a few times today, is offensive because it has a history of Native women being held as property of settlers and just for their sexuality. Maybe there's a better way to put all of that, but basically sexual slavery. And so that is not great, in my opinion. I don't want places to be named after that. And as a Native woman myself, I don't ever want to know. I'd say it's the same level of repulsiveness as other words for the Black community. It is one of the worst words that you can use for a Native person. So that's what it is, what it means. And there are some, I think it may have come from a Native word a long time ago, but I think that's kind of disputed. So I'm not going to try to give credence to that. But the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, has really targeted that one because that is the most widespread slur across our basements in the country. Thanks, Maria. Okay, I think we can close the poll. It looks like we have some astute listeners on the call. 73% answered correctly that of the 2,241 place names on 16 National Park visitor maps, only four commemorate a Black person. And 69% answered correctly that of the 16 studied National Parks, 52 names commemorate individuals who perpetrated physical or racial violence. That's pretty shocking if you think about it, that there's 13 times more names commemorating people who perpetrated physical or racial violence than that honor Black people. And this is in our National Parks, which protects some of America's most iconic landscapes, and people travel from all over the world to see. So clearly it creates the wrong message, it's not acceptable, and it has to change. And again, thank you, Bonnie, for your important research bringing this to light. Let's do a few more audience questions, and then we'll wrap up with a session about what you can do if you want to help address some of these offensive place names. Fred, I think this would be a good question for you. Is the word Indian offensive when used by non-Native people? I think it has become offensive in the last, you know, in the last maybe 10 years or so. But I grew up with it, and that's what we were called when I was growing up. You know, we were called, even in the schools we were called, you know, the Indian students. And so I think as time went along and they began to change, to use, you know, a better word, term for it, then it became offensive because it became, you know, more knowledge that Columbus missed India by a long ways. And, you know, that's where we got the name. It's from Columbus. He discovered us, and he said, these are Indians because I found India, or he was on his way to India, and he took a wrong turn. But anyway, that's where the term came from because of who he was looking for. And so it just became what we were called. And so as time came along and we began to tell people that this was wrong, then it became offensive. And we should, everybody started to reidentify us as Native Americans. Great. Thank you, Fred. Bonnie, I think this is a good question for you. You study the National Parks. And as we know, the Department of the Interior, which includes the National Parks, have now undertaken two efforts to try to eliminate racist and offensive place names. I guess the two-part question for you, one, what do you think of this effort overall? Do you think they're on the right track? And two, how do we go about identifying replacement names so that we're not adding another colonialist name for the name that's being replaced? Yeah, I think we're on the right track. I think looking first at derogatory names is a first step. And this has happened in the past. Like in 1967, they assessed all places using the N-word and changed them to a slightly different N-word. And today, some of those are being called to be changed further. And then they also changed a derogatory word for Japanese people, place names at that time. So there are on federal lands in the United States, theoretically, none of those. And so doing it now, there's a precedent set for this. I think part of the reason that the task force is needed is because these one group at a time, going through all the effort, pulling together a proposal, going through the process with the Board of Geographic Names, which is not a very well resourced committee themselves, to do all of these names is a Herculean effort. And so to have a diverse task force of people who've been thinking about place names and can do some of this more at a systematic, systemic level, I think is really key. And then as far as finding a new place names, you know, that's not easy either. And there can be actually new controversy come up then because many different tribes and groups can have their own traditional place name for the same place, which I think maybe Maria can speak to with Mount Tahoma. So that would be a whole nother sort of building consensus sort of process. And another example is with Black Elk Peak in the Black Hills, where there was a whole like, we call it this, and this is our word, and we spell it that way. And an elder proposed calling it Black Elk Peak rather than its previous name for a person responsible for a genocide act. And so it's, you know, a new name. It's not a traditional name, but it's a name everybody was like, yeah, let's respect and honor Black Elk and tell the world, you know, who he was. So I think those sort of consensus building and making sure we have the right people at the table for that will be important. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. I'm glad you think the Department of the Interior is on the right path in this important effort. So let's do one more question, and then we'll kind of get to the what you can do to help section. Valerie, we talked a little bit earlier about cancel culture. How do we get past this concept of canceling culture and focus more on the idea that of helping people heal past wounds, addressing kind of historic injustices, and do collective healing? Sure. Great question. And I was perusing the questions in the box here myself. I really deeply appreciate that. I think Maria probably gave a better answer to this already than I could, but I would say, I would recommend a resource that I've read recently, actually. It's called Flying Horse, and it's a book. It's a short read, and it's really powerful. And I would make several references to that and a longer answer that I would give. I think that, you know, as Maria said, it's not about canceling anybody's culture. It's about telling stories that haven't been told, stories that have already attempted to be canceled. We're casting a light on those that have so long been in shadow, and that includes the boarding school era for Native peoples. I'm compelled to mention that here. That's been another huge and welcome and overdue initiative out of the Department of the Interior and something that played such a role in the systematic destruction of cultures and languages of Native peoples nationwide and has lasting and far-reaching effects in the form of generational trauma and the epidemics that we see as the symptoms of that historical generational trauma. And so, I think it's just important to emphasize tying all those things together that we're all related. People to each other. We're all humans. We're all related to our non-human relatives on the landscape. And when some of us aren't whole, then none of us are whole, and that's the work that we're doing. It's important for those of us as descendants of colonizers. It's at least as important for us to be allies and for us to do this work, too. Very well said. Bonnie, do you want to add something there? I want to add something just really quick, because it's such an important question. I think when we can, referring to the problem as unjust place names or more generically problematic, I think when you say offensive, then people criticizing canceled cultures will be like, oh, someone's offended, which is so subjective, right? Whereas if you connect it to systems of injustice, then you're getting more at, like, these are things that have definition. Racism isn't a feeling. It's a system. And so, I think, again, words matter, the theme of the day. But so, that might be part of how we talk about it. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to all our panelists. You all are, again, national leaders on this important work, doing such important work. I think I speak for many people on this call when we say thank you, and we appreciate the work that you're doing. So, we've heard a lot about some of this important work going on. For those who are motivated to act, there's a number of ways that you can make a difference right now. And we've compiled all this information into a single Action Hub that we will drop into the chat. I should mention, too, before I forget, that if you did have a question that we didn't get to today, you should feel free to email that to webinars at tws.org, and we'll drop that into the chat as well. And we can get that to the right panelists to respond to directly. Or if you have any other questions for us, feel free to send a note. So, on our Action Hub, there's a couple actions that you can take. First, as we mentioned earlier, the Department of the Interior is eliminating one particularly offensive slur from public lands, a word that Native leaders have sought to eliminate for decades. And they're right in the middle of the public comment period right now. But the deadline is coming up right around the corner. It's this Sunday at midnight Eastern time. So, you have five more days to let the Department of the Interior know that you would like to rename these mountains, rivers, and valleys. And we've created a map that shows these places. And again, this is all at our Action Hub that you can get from the chat now. If you hover over a dot on the map, it shows the five, it shows the feature to be renamed and the five potential replacement names. So, you can weigh in on what you think any of these features should be named, including a replacement name from the list, or propose your own name, which you're welcome to do as well. If you don't have a preference and just want to see these names gotten rid of, you can tell the Department of the Interior that and tell them that you support this effort and you would encourage them to both eliminate these derogatory names and also eliminate other offensive place names from our public lands. And then, just as a reminder, five days away, Sunday at midnight is the deadline. So, you don't have much time here. The second thing you can do, Fred spoke eloquently about the work on to rename Mount Evans as Mount Blue Sky in Colorado. And we're at a very pivotal stage in that campaign as well. There's a state board in Colorado, the Colorado Geographic Name Advisory Board, that will make a recommendation to the federal agency that's responsible for place names. And as Fred described, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and others are proposing to rename Mount Evans as Mount Blue Sky, which honors the Cheyenne and Arapaho people who were suffered through the Sand Creek Massacre. We have a lot of support for that name, but we really need the Colorado Naming Board to make a recommendation to change the name of Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky. And this is where you come in. We need you to tell the Colorado Naming Board that you support this name change of Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky. And you can find a link to this in our action portal in the chat. The last action you can take is, as Valerie mentioned, there's now a how-to guide that the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and the Wilderness Society recently released to help anyone change the name of any geographic feature in the United States with an offensive name. And as Bonnie described, there's a lot of them. So this guide will walk you through everything you need to know if you want to propose a new name and propose to rename a place with an offensive name. You can learn how to do that just by reading this guide. So if you have questions about anything, we're here to help. Obviously, let us know. You can reach out to us at webinars at tws.org. All of this information is at our Action Hub. And we will send out a link to the recording of today's session. Let me thank all of our panelists again for joining today. Thank all of you for taking the time to learn about this important issue and for your questions. And thank the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and the Natural History Museum for partnering with the Wilderness Society to host this event. That's all we have for today. Have a great rest of your day and thank you again for joining.