REINDIGENIZING PLACE NAMES
Laura Grabhorn and Zoltan Grossman
The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA
Place names denote a power to define the landscape
and control the people who live in it.
Changing place names captures the power and
meanings of the names, for colonization or
decolonization
BC Archives, call number D00692 "Quamichan village
When Indigenous homelands were colonized, their place
names were changed to reflect control by European
settlers, who viewed the existing Native place names as
irrelevant.
Bushoowah-ahlee
Squaw Point
Indigenous
Place Names &
Cartographies
Indigenous place names represent teachings,
values, landmarks, mental mapping, cultural
and spiritual mapping
Boat tour of Sts’Ailes cultural sites on
Harrison River BC by Chief Willie Charlie
Native Cartographies
• Derived from, passed down oral tradition/memory
• Pictured experiences of landscape, routes
• Expression of cosmos; guide down life “path”
• Communicate with Euro-Americans after Contact
Idaho Map Rock
Idaho Map Rock
(Basalt Petroglyph), southwest Idaho
(Interpretation) (Modern Hydrography)
Red Sky’s birchbark scroll
of the Ojibwe Great Migration
Watershed Perspective
The Gitksan in B.C. have
an upriver, coastal
perspective
Native Place Naming
Often no name for large areas (range, coast, river)
Instead local names, most with cultural meaning
In Northwest: many names associated with water
rather than land
Segments of major river Similar to UK, SE U.S.
Ojibwe names for Wisconsin River
Examples close to home
Gwi deq Geoduck!
doos-WAH-loopsh (‘place of
thieves or selfish people’). Twana.
On the beach near the mouth of
the Dosewallips River at the
present town of Brinnon. The name
refers to the village, the river, and
to a mountain (Mt Jupiter? Mt
Constance?) far inland, on the left
hand as one goes upriver. The
mountain is flanked by a series of
hills which were called its children.
doowh-yah-BOOS (‘place of
crooked-jawed salmon’).
Twana. At the mouth of the
Duckabush River. The name
refers to both the river and to
the winter village here. Other
Twana and Klallam visitors
also camped nearby during
salmon season. The village
headman in the early 1800s
was a warrior named whahWHAH-kw’sub.
staht-SAHS-ahbsh. Located at the head of Budd Inlet at presentday town of Tumwater. In the mid-1800s there were three houses here.
The people from this village moved into the Nisqually reservation at the
time of concentration. North of here, on the west side of Budd Inlet just
below the downtown Olympia bridge was the village of b'TSUHt'kood ('frequented by black bears'), and further north still, at
Dofflemyer Point, was a place called cheh-tsah-AHL-too, 'house
pits', for depressions in the ground showing where houses had once
stood long ago. -from Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound-Tom Daily
COLONIZING PLACE NAMES
“Where, they wondered, did the whites
get the power to say where the land should begin
and end simply on a map?”
--Lakota historian Joseph Marshall III
“The earth is part of my body and I never
gave up the earth….What person pretended
to divide the land and put me on it?”
--Nez Percé spiritual leader
Toolhulhulsote, 1877
George Vancouver
• Named places for friends and features
meaningful for himself and they had nothing to
do with the names that were already here
o
o
o
o
o
Admiral Peter Rainier (never came to the US)
Peter Puget (part of the Vancouver expedition)
Deception Pass (thought it was a bay DOH!)
Joseph Whidbey (part of the Vancouver expedition)
Hood Canal (Lord Samuel Hood)
Rainier, Tahoma, or Ti’Swaq’?
Day of One Thousand Drums
Day of One Thousand Drums
Native American
Place Names
in Washington
Place Name
Claimed origin
Alki Point
Cathlamet
Chehalis River
Cowlitz River
Enumclaw
Okanagon River
Spokane
Hoquiam
Ilwaco
Kalama
Kitsap Peninsula
Neah Bay
Nisqually
Puyallup
Quinault River
Seattle
Skykomish
Snoqualmie Pass
Steilacoom
Tacoma
Tatoosh Island
Tonasket
Toppenish
Vendovi Island
Waiilatpu
Walla Walla
Wenatchee
Willapa Bay
Yakima
Tomorrow; Almost
Stone; Cathlamet Tribe
Sand
Capturing the Medicine Spirit
Place of Evil Spirits
Okanagan Tribe
Sun; Spokane Tribe
Driftwood
Chief Ilwaco Jim
Stone
Chief Kitsap
Chief Deea
People of the Meadow
Puyallup Tribe
Quinault Tribe
Chief Sealth
Inland People
Moon People
Chief Tail-a-koom
Mount Tahoma (Rainier)
Chief Tatoosh
Chief Tonasket
People of the Foothills
Chief Vendovi
Place of the Rye Grass
Little River
Great Opening in Mountains
Willapa Tribe
Yakama Nation
DECOLONIZING PLACE NAMES
Political shift:
Leningrad (USSR)
St. Petersburg (Russia)
Independence:
Léopoldville (Belgian Congo)
Kinshasa (Congo)
Official language shift:
Kishinev (Russian)
Chisinau (Moldovan)
Alphabet transliteration:
Chernigov (USSR)
Chernihiv (Ukraine)
Menominee
Traditional
Clans Project
Traditional domain
with Menominee
place names, trails,
and villages
Indigenization of Place Names
in Nunavik: Inuit (Eskimo) region of northern Quebec
Countermapping::
Mapping for Local Empowerment
Defend and reinforce sovereignty & resources
Adding names to maps, Geographic Information Systems for
land claims, resource conflicts, language revitalization, sense of place.
Traditional knowledge of names kept by elders, transmitted to youth.
Land
Claims
In B.C.
Resource
conflicts
Treaty
Processes
Traditional
Use Studies
xxxxx
B.C. First Nations
youth mapping teams
Native youth
learn places
from elders
Haida Gwaii not
Queen Charlotte Islands
Salish Sea
Puget Sound +
Strait of Juan de Fuca +
Strait of Georgia
These names still used:
Salish Sea like “Great Lakes”
U.S. Board on Geographic Names
BGN Domestic Names
Committee
Principles
I. Roman alphabet
question of diacritical marks (accents, fonts),
pronounciation (emergency)
II. Names in Local Usage
Who is “local”? Ceded territory vs. Reservation, Tribal migrations
III. Names established by Act of Congress or
Executive Order
IV. Names established by other authorities-Washington State BGN recently disbanded
V. One name for geographic feature
(but variants can be listed)
BGN and Names of Native
American Origin
“will consult with federally recognized tribes having an historic or
cultural affiliation with the geographic location of the feature. In
addition, the Board may consult with such other organized
Native American entities as it finds may have an interest in the
feature being proposed for naming”
“supports and promotes the official use of geographic names
derived from Native American languages. To this end, the expert
documentation of these names in current use is encouraged.”
Executive Order 13175 (2000) direct federal agencies to consult &
coordinate with tribes. Special Committee on Tribal Coordination &
Native American Names Policy gives ppriority if under tribal jurisdiction,
but tribes in NAGPRA database have say outside reservation.
BGN Policy on Derogatory Names
BGN changes place names “highly offensive or derogatory to
a particular racial or ethnic group, gender, or religious group”
(Any individual or agency may file application).
N----- and J-- automatically changed.
“Squaw” not defined universally offensive (case-by-case).
Question of “political correctness.”
Question of sovereignty--who represents tribal perspective.
Origins of Squaw Place Names
• ussqua Algonquin language
word for woman
• Colonial usage also
had squa as a definition for
any female animal
Algonquin languages
As the word squaw evolves, it is used to
refer to any American Indian woman,
regardless of tribe or culture. Anything made
or used by Indian women would end up
carrying “squaw” in front of it.
Issues of Squaw Place Names
Nancy Parezo in American Indian Quarterly (June
2009) notes that squaw place names also refer to
“imagined places on a woman’s body” and cites
Squaw Tit in Idaho and Squaw Teats in Wyoming
as well as places where Indian women gathered
or worked.
The term becomes
dehumanizing
• To be squawed meant a Euro man marries an
Indian woman. He wasn’t fit to marry another
Euro woman. He became a “squaw man.”
• By the late 1800s “squaw” = to drudge, homely,
silent, haggard, dark Indian
• In the West, a “squaw” was the name for a figure
in a kneeling position for rifle target competitions
(Parezo, June 2009)
• By the 20th century, a “squaw” is essentially a
sloth, barely human, marginal.
Origins of other derogatory terms
English
Latin
Meaning
Primitive
Primitivus
“First of its kind”
Savage
Salvaticus
“Of the forest”
Civilize
Civilis
“Citify; make a citizen”
Changing “Squaw” Place Names
Bans in Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma,
South Dakota, Oregon, Maine, Florida,
North Carolina, Tennessee
(No ban in Washington state)
Local resistance
Piestewa Peak, AZ
“Squaw” Place Names in Washington
Native Women’s Labor
Many ”Squaw” place names in areas
of women’s cultivation and gathering
(camas bulbs, berries, clams, geoducks, etc.)
Explorers and settlers see groups of women
harvesting, without understanding why,
and use racist term to describe them
Recognize as women’s places:
Coeur d’Alene Tribe renames “squaw”
places after terms for female relatives
Former “Squaw” Place Names in Washington
Case studies in Coeur d’Alene territory:
John Paulson Creek, WA
(compromise name after respectful settler)
Awtskin Canyon, WA
(non-Native opposition and support)
Eliminating Squaw Point
Government-to-Government
consultation mandated for State
“Educating the citizens of our state, particularly the youth who
are our future leaders, about tribal history, culture, treaty
rights, contemporary tribal and state government institutions
and relations and the contribution of Indian Nations to the
State of Washington.”
-- New Millennium Agreement (1999)
–TESC to Squaxin Island Tribe
--TESC Name Change Cmte.
--Charlene Krise appoints
linguist Zalmai Zahir
Thomas Talbot Waterman’s
Puget Sound Geography
Zahir co authors reproduction of
Thomas Talbot Waterman’s (T. T.
Waterman) manuscript on place
names originally published in 1922.
The book includes over a 1,000
Lushootseed place names with
ethnographic material from T. T.
Waterman. It contains the original
manuscript with the addition of maps,
tables and Lushootseed spelling
updated to with the International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) system.
Authors: Vi Hilbert, Jay Miller,
Zalmai Zahir
Zalmai’s conclusions
I received the go-ahead from Charlene to use the place name listed in
the Puget Sound Geography book. It is listed on page 300, place name
number 111.
T.T. Waterman lists the name as B1cuwa'3ali, (1= uh, c=sh, and 3= glottal
stop in his orthography).
I strongly recommend not using his orthography. Instead, I would write it:
Bushoowah ahlee. This form uses the English alphabet and could be
written on maps, etc.
The whole etymology is unclear, but the prefix and suffix are
Lushootseed. The prefix bu(s) (where the /s/ is silent when in
().) =inherently has. The suffix ahllee = place of. Delbert sees a possible
relationship between the Twana word for trail, path and what appears to be
the root: shoowah, but I have no way to confirm this. We have no way to
be sure of this translation. In any event, Bushoowah ahlee is what we feel
should be the recognized name, given that it is clearly the ancestral
name. I would recomend proposing it as an ancestral name that is so
old its meaning has been lost.
Renaming Ceremony,
May 26, 2012
Resources
Native Mapping Links
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/Countermapping.html
Indigenous Mapping Network
http://www.indigenousmapping.net
U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic
Restore Native Names
http://www.restorenativenames.org
Coast Salish Villages of Puget Sound
http://coastsalishmap.org/new_page_7.htm
Squaxin Island Museum
http://www.squaxinislandmuseum.org
Squelching the S-Word
http://www.bluecomics.com/squaw.htm