Continuing efforts to rename lakes, creeks, mountains and other geographical places with offensive and racist names are happening in Oregon, often with help from tribes and Native historians
From lakes to creeks, mountains to plateaus, efforts across Oregon to change offensive and racist geographical place names are increasing in recent years, though dozens remain.
Last month, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, or USBGN, gave final approval to change the name of Swastika Mountain, located in the Umpqua National Forest, to Mount Halo, after Kalapuya Chief Halito.
The decision is part of a larger movement to remove offensive and racist geographic place names across Oregon, often with the collaboration of tribes and Native historians.
Mount Halo
The modern-day connotation of the swastika symbol is practically inalienable from its association with Nazis. However, it’s not what inspired the name of Oregon’s Swastika Mountain.
The peak was named after Swastika, Oregon, a tiny settler town in Southern Oregon near Ashland. The town got its name from a swastika-shaped cattle brand used by rancher Clayton E. Burton in the late 19th century.
Before its association with the Nazi regime, the swastika symbol, derived from the Sanskrit word “svastika,” meaning “good fortune” or “well-being,” was associated with good luck. It remains a sacred symbol in several religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.
Today, its usage in the West is primarily by extremist groups promoting hate and anti-Semitism. Display of the symbol is banned in some countries, like Germany.
The name Swastika Mountain remained until an Indigenous historian, David Lewis, proposed a change.
Lewis (Takelma, Chinook, Molalla, Santiam Kalapuya) is an assistant professor of ethnic studies at Oregon State University, a Grande Ronde tribal historian and a preeminent expert on the history of Western Oregon.
Lewis submitted the official proposal to change the peak’s name to Mount Halo after the Oregon Geographic Names Board, or OGNB, reached out to him for suggestions.
“I looked at where the location of the mountain was, and I noticed that it was not too far away from where Halo's village was — his original birth village,” Lewis said. “So I suggested that. It sounds like a good name. Mount Halo is kind of a good name and strong name.”
Lewis, who is related to Chief Halo by marriage seven generations back, used an essay he wrote on Chief Halo as supporting evidence in his proposal.
Chief Halito, commonly shortened to Chief Halo, meaning “having little” or “needing little,” was the leader of the Yoncalla Kalapuya tribe.
Halo remained in his ancestral homelands even after the U.S. government removed area tribes to reservations in the 1850s.
“Despite the dangers of the Rogue River war south of the Umpqua Valley, the death of so many Native people, and the acts of racism and efforts to exterminate the tribes by volunteer militia, Halo chose to remain in his traditional lands,” Lewis wrote in the essay. “Halo and his family were prominent people in the community of Yoncalla and for generations were friends with the Applegate family.”
The Applegate family was a prominent Southern family that settled in Yoncalla and formed a lifelong friendship with Chief Halo and his family.
After the removal of the Yoncalla, Umpqua and Kalapuya tribes from the Umpqua Valley region to the Grand Ronde Reservation in 1856, Chief Halo refused to leave his ancestral homelands. The Applegate family offered the Halo family a place to live on their land allotment.
“(The Applegates) were friends with the Halo family and then basically defended their right to stay (after removal),” Lewis said.
After submitting his proposal, Lewis learned a Eugene resident also submitted a proposal to rename the peak.
“A woman had proposed Mount Umpqua or Umpqua Mountain,” Lewis said. “So she withdrew her proposal when she heard I proposed Mount Halo, but I didn't even know she was working on that. So I didn't do that intentionally.”
Lewis, who has submitted other successful name-change proposals in the past, says it’s crucial that people know the history of where they live.
“Native people are as much a part of history as white people,” Lewis said. “We've never really gone anywhere; we've always been here. That history and that perspective is not in a lot of our history books and has not been for a very long time.
So a lot of people appreciate that. People I teach nowadays — students and others — they appreciate hearing all the history, not just the parts that are comfortable to them.”
Still, the proposal wasn’t without pushback.
Bruce Fisher, president and interim committee co-chair of the OGNB the OGNB received “some pushback” from Hindu religious groups opposed to changing the name during the OGNB’s bi-annual meeting.
The OGNB is a primarily volunteer-based agency responsible for supervising the naming of geographic features and sending recommendations to the USBGN for final approval.
“It was something that went up to the U.S. Board, and the U.S. Board accepted the name change,” Fisher said. “They felt that swastikas, for most people alive, have a pretty foul meaning.”
Fisher said the OGNB doesn’t receive many opposition letters, but it depends on proposed changes.
The OGNB typically advances most proposals it receives to the USBGN but can only present evidence and does not influence the outcome.
“You never know; you just kind of give it to them and wait to see how they vote,” Fisher said.
The successful renaming of Mount Halo is one of the dozens of recently renamed geographic features in Oregon.
Order 3404
Dozens of places in Oregon include the sq*** slur in their name, despite more than 20 years of efforts to remove it.
In 2001, the Oregon State legislature called for eliminating the “sq***” slur in geographic place names in the state. The word is a racially derogatory term used towards Native American women.
Since then, many offensively-named places have changed, often in collaboration with the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon. Records from the OGNB show dozens of new names for geographic features formerly containing the sq*** slur.
In 2016, the USBGN approved 14 new names in Oregon to replace sq*** slurs and tabling dozens of others for further review. In 2018, there were 16 names.
In 2019, the USBGN approved just one name change of this nature — a proposal submitted by Lewis. One of the over three dozen creeks in Oregon formerly known as “Sq*** Creek,” this particular creek, located in Tillamook County, is now called Nestucca Bobb Creek.
The Tillamook County creek’s new name honors Levi Bobb, a 19th-century leader of the Nestucca Tribe of Tillamook Indians who remained a community leader even after his people’s removal from their homelands.
However, running directly adjacent to Nestucca Bobb Creek is Sq*** Creek Road. In 2020, a Tillamook County official said the road did not belong to the county but that it would work to determine ownership of the road.
Tillamook County Commissioner Mary Faith Bell told Street Roots the county determined the road belongs to the U.S. Forest Service.
The movement for changing sq*** names regained steam in November 2021 when U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland issued Secretary Order 3404, officially designating the “sq***” word as offensive and ordering it removed from more than 660 geographic place names across the United States, including 55 in Oregon.
According to Fisher, that number used to be much higher, closer to 200.
The OGNB helped change more than 100 sq*** names before Secretary Order 3404.
“There's been fairly steady activity replacing offensive names both coming from the tribes and individuals from the federal land agencies, management agencies," Fisher said.
Fisher, a geographer, says the OGNB plays a “middleman” role of overseeing proposals for name changes from individuals, sometimes helping to collect photos, documents and letters of support when a proposal is submitted.
“It's a little bit lengthy process, but we keep the proponent involved,” Fisher said. “They can even come to our meetings if they know our proposals on the docket and going to be voted on by us; they can come and be there to answer questions.”
The OGNB also accepts proposals for names of geographic features that have no existing name. Often, Indigenous peoples have names for more minor geographic features that have a cultural significance to their people that would go unnamed by non-Native groups.
In 2021, the USBGN approved 10 new names for creeks that flow off of Mary’s Peak, located near Corvallis. Mary’s Peak is a culturally significant location for the Kalapuya, Wusi’n (Alsea) and Yaqo’n (Yaquina) peoples.
Kalapuya oral history describes during the Willamette Valley Floods, which geologists estimated occcurred between 13,000 and 18,000 years ago and flooded the region with more than 400 feet of water, Kalapuya ancestors sought refuge on Chantimanwi, or Mary’s Peak.
Two years of collaboration between the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, the community group Mary’s Peak Alliance, scientists and landowners culminated in the name changes.
David Harrelson, tribal historic preservation officer for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, played a major role in the renaming process.
“Our history is written upon the landscape,” Harrelson told Street Roots. “By ensuring indigenous names represent geographic places in Oregon we are preserving memory of this lands Indigenous people, allowing for our continued and ongoing persistence into the future.”
The partnership resulted in names for 10 previously officially unnamed creeks in three different Indigenous languages that reflected the areas' “linguistic, cultural and geographic areas, as well as in the appropriate Indigenous language.”
Six of the creeks are named for characters in Kalapuya oral stories about the mountain and Mary’s River, including Ahngeengeen, meaning “the Flint,” Ahnhoots, meaning “the Panther,” and Ahmoolint, or “the wolf” in central Kalapuya language.
Three of the creeks are named in the Wusi’n language; Wusi’n, the name of the tribe, Pa’wint meaning "cinnamon bear," a reddish-brown black bear found on Mary’s Peak and Lo wa’ ha yu, meaning "mountain" in English.
The final creek is called Yaqo’n, which is how Yaquina people refer to themselves in their language.
After the group agreed upon the 10 names for the creeks, it contacted the OGNB for the next steps in the process. The OGNB helped assemble the appropriate supplementary documents before voting unanimously to approve the names. The USBGN followed suit.
Remaining Issues
Although the OGNB and USBGN work to eliminate offensive and racist place names, the agencies don’t control all offensively-named locations in Oregon.
Winding more than 30 miles through Jackson County, cars cruise up county-owned Dead Indian Memorial Road. Jackson County, which is in charge of naming the road, refuses to change it, despite decades-long controversy over the offensive name.
Also in Jackson County, the OGNB recently renamed several geographic features formerly called “Dead Indian” as Latgawa Creek, Latgawa Mountain and Latgawa Soda Springs. The OGNB doesn’t have the same recourse in the case of a county-owned feature.
For over 140 years, Dead Indian Memorial Road was known as Dead Indian Road until Jackson County officials added “Memorial” in 1993.
That doesn’t go far enough, according to Lewis, who, along with Jolene Bettles (Klamath, Nez Perce, Chugach, Wasco, Aleut), started a campaign in 2020 urging Jackson County Commissioners to change the name of Dead Indian Memorial Road.
“They changed it to ‘Memorial’ — doesn't really make it any better,” Lewis said. “But we tried to change it, like I had a campaign a couple of years ago to try and change that, and we could not get Jackson County Board of Commissioners to listen to us.”
Jackson County Board of Commissioners did not respond to a request for comment.
Part of Lewis’ campaign was a petition urging the commissioners to recognize a connection between the name of the road and the period of Oregon’s history fraught with widespread violence against Indigenous peoples.
“This realization has deeper connotations and makes the meaning behind ‘Dead Indian Memorial Road’ quite clear, as it represents a time when American Indian communities, our families, were killed by settler militia without any fear of punishment, and our own people were without legal recourse or protections under American law,” Lewis and Bettles’ statement reads.
The petition garnered more than 8,000 signatures.
Jackson County ignored the campaign.
“This name does nothing but prop up the vainglory of the settlers and gold miners who committed genocide on whole tribes of Native people because they wanted wealth and land,” the petition says.
Until the Jackson County Board of Commissioners votes to change the name, it will remain.
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