Renaming 'Squaw' Sites Proves Touchy in Oregon (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Renaming 'Squaw' Sites Proves Touchy in Oregon
By ELI SANDERS

Published: December 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/national/11squaw.html

[photo inset - Melanie Conner for The New York Times.  After three years
of debate among tribal leaders, 42 alternatives to Squaw Creek have
emerged in Sisters, Ore. Olivia Wallulatum, left, prefers "ayayat," or
"beautiful." Colleen Roba prefers "choosh," or "water."]

SISTERS, Ore. - It took two years for members of the Confederated Tribes
of Warm Springs to persuade Oregon lawmakers to remove the word "squaw"
from the state's maps, which are filled with places like Squaw Meadow,
Squaw Flat and, here in central Oregon, Squaw Creek.

Figuring out what to rename these places has proved more complicated.
Around the Warm Springs reservation and the nearby town of Sisters,
three years of pointed debate among local tribal leaders has produced
42 alternatives to Squaw Creek in three native languages.

Many of the suggestions are hard for English speakers and even some
Indians to pronounce, like "ixwutxp." It means "blackberry" in the
Wasco language. Other suggested Indian names are spelled using a
lowercase "l" with a slash through it, signifying a guttural "tla"
sound that does not exist in English.

"It's really gotten out of hand here," said Louie Pitt, director of
government affairs and planning for the confederated tribes, which
occupy the 670,000-acre reservation.

"Squaw" originated in a branch of the Algonquin language, where it meant
simply "woman," but it turned into a slur on the tongues of white
settlers, who used it to refer derisively to Indian women in general or
a part of their anatomy in particular. The settlers liked the word so
much that there are now more than 170 springs, gulches, bluffs,
valleys, and gaps in this state called "squaw." All must be renamed
under a 2001 law that was enacted after two members of the confederated
tribes persuaded the Legislature that the word was offensive to many
American Indians and should be erased from maps. But only 13 places
have been renamed so far. It is a problem familiar to Indians and
government officials in several states where attempts to outlaw "squaw"
have been caught in a thicket of bureaucratic, historical and
linguistic snares.

In Maine, one frustrated county changed all "squaw" names to "moose" in
one fell swoop to save on hassle, while in Minnesota, disgruntled
residents suggested new names like Politically Correct Creek and
Politically Correct Bay. But often the stumbling block has been
questions over what Indians themselves would prefer instead of "squaw."

The debate echoes those from decades ago over places named with slurs
for blacks and Japanese. In 1963 and 1974, respectively, offending
slurs were replaced on federal maps with "negro" and "Japanese" (about
a dozen of the "negro" names have since been changed). Concerns of
other groups have been addressed in a more piecemeal fashion, and not
always with the same result.

In the early 1990's, after two years of consideration, Yellowstone
National Park's Chinaman Spring was changed to Chinese Spring. In 2001,
American ichthyologists adopted a new name for the jewfish, the Goliath
grouper, citing the precedent of an earlier change, from squawfish to
pikeminnow. But the United States Board on Geographic Names declined to
rename Jewfish Creek in the Florida Keys because there was little local
sentiment for doing so. "Geographic names are parts of language," said
Roger Payne, executive secretary for the names board and a veteran of
the nation's long and frequently ethnically charged place name debates.
"Language evolves. Meanings change. This seems to be the case with
'squaw.' "

But no easy universal solution is possible with "squaw," Mr. Payne said,
because among Indian leaders, "there was endless disagreement on the
word it could be changed to."

That is precisely the problem with Squaw Creek. The list of 42
replacement words is causing considerable anxiety here, even among
non-Indian residents who support the renaming of the creek, which
drains out of glaciers in the nearby Cascade Mountains before running
through Sisters on the way to the Deschutes River.

"I think there's one or two on the list that appear to be sort of
pronounceable, but many of them are not," said Eileen Stein, city
manager of Sisters. One of the suggestions more easily pronounced by
English speakers, Itch Ish Kiin, which is another name for the Sahaptin
tribe, can come out sounding an awful lot like Itchy Skin, she noted.
"People don't want to live near Itchy Skin Creek," Ms. Stein said.

So the debate goes. Mr. Pitt of the Confederated Tribes dismisses those
concerns as "ethnocentric," saying ease of pronunciation for English
speakers is "not one of our criteria." But he also admits a measure of
scorn for the long list, which he sarcastically calls the "pan-Indian
solution."

If the controversy seems a bit overwrought, Mr. Pitt said, it is borne
of a painful dislocation from his ancestors' heritage, with many Indian
site names long forgotten. "What is the name of that creek?" he asked
himself, frustration filling his voice. "It has a name, what is it?"

Elders in the tribes have been unable to remember what the local Indians
used to call the creek, Mr. Pitt said. There has even been some debate
about which tribe first controlled the creek, hence the three languages
vying for naming rights.

Five other states have tried to take care of the "squaw" problem through
legislative action. In 1995, Mr. Payne said, Minnesota became the first
and has now renamed all 20 of its offending places (having rebuffed the
Politically Correct Creek contingent).

Maine, Montana, Oklahoma, and South Dakota followed suit, but all still
have work to do on their geographic lexicons.

Along the banks of Oregon's Squaw Creek, a resolution seems far off. In
an interview there, Olivia Wallulatum, wearing traditional otter skin
wraps around her long black braids and a dress adorned with small white
cowrie shells, said she preferred the word "ayayat," which means
"beautiful." Colleen Roba, who with Ms. Wallulatum lobbied the
Legislature to pass the renaming law, said she liked "choosh," which
means "water" and evokes the sound that Squaw Creek makes as it moves
around ice-capped rocks and through a grove of pine trees in Creekside
City Park in Sisters.

At Sisters City Hall, Ms. Stein, the city manager, said she just hoped
that whatever the new name, it would not "create a hardship" for
businesses in the area named after Squaw Creek, or for local tongues.