(C) BoingBoing
This story was originally published by BoingBoing and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



U.S. Interior Department renames places to remove offensive term for Native American women [1]

['Mark Frauenfelder']

Date: 2023-01-13

The U.S. Department of the Interior, under the leadership of Secretary Deb Haaland, announced yesterday that it had renamed five places that used a racist term for a Native American woman. The places, located in California, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas, will no longer contain the word "squaw" in their names.

Secretary Haaland, the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position, stated that "Words matter, particularly in our work to ensure our nation's public lands and waters are accessible and welcoming to people of all backgrounds." and emphasized the importance of removing the term "squaw" which she deemed as "harmful."

This move follows similar actions taken by the Interior Department in 1962 and 1974, when derogatory terms for Black and Japanese people were removed from place names.

From NPR:

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2023/01/13/u-s-interior-department-renames-places-to-remove-offensive-term-for-native-american-women.html

Published and (C) by BoingBoing
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/boingboing/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.