Indigenous coalition takes on mission to rename town
Roman Rain Tree’s mother was gravely ill with cancer when he asked her if she thought their Native American tribe would gain federal recognition while their ancestral homeland in Fresno County bore a name many consider offensive.
Gina Charley said no but levied a challenge for her son: “If you think you can change it, then show them the pen is mightier than the sword,” Rain Tree said Friday.
Although the 2013 conversation was one of their last — Charley died the following month — Rain Tree was inspired to fight to alter the name of Squaw Valley, Calif., a town of about 3,600 people.
On Jan. 1, Rain Tree — on behalf of the coalition Rename S-Valley Fresno County — submitted a proposal to change the name to the Board on Geographic Names, a federal body tasked with naming geographic places. About two months earlier, in November, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland declared the term “squaw” derogatory and instructed the board to implement procedures to remove the name from federal usage. Under the secretarial orders, a task force was also created to find replacement names for geographic features on federal land with the name.
Rain Tree, a Fresno resident, has ties to the Dunlap Band of Mono Indians and the Choinumni tribe, both indigenous to the valley, and spent summers at his grandparents’ home in the area growing up.
But he said the land is tainted by the term “squaw,” which Rain Tree called “the equivalent of the ‘C-word’ but specific for Indigenous women.” Nuum Valley is the proposed new name, though Rain Tree said it may be adjusted. “Nuum” means “the people” in the Western Mono language.
Even within a broader cultural conversation examining place names, the term “squaw” has earned particular scrutiny.
“The term has historically been used as an offensive ethnic, racial and sexist slur, particularly for Indigenous women,” the U.S. Department of the Interior said in a news release.
Several states have outlawed using the term in place names, including Montana, Oregon, Maine and Minnesota. In September, the historic Squaw Valley ski resort in Lake Tahoe changed its name after its owners acknowledged the name was offensive. Still, the name is prevalent across the country. There were 650 federal “land units” with the name when Haaland’s secretarial orders were issued in the fall.