This essay was initially revealed in September 2019. Whereas a lot has modified within the intervening interval, in some ways these phrases are much more related at this time than they had been six years in the past. In gentle of the Trump Administration’s January 20 determination to alter the federally designated identify of North America’s highest peak, Denali, to “Mount McKinley,” it felt an apt time to re-share.
-Owen Clarke, editor-at-large
The phrase “Everest” conjures up common recognition and awe, however inform a gaggle of buddies of your imminent plans to summit “Chomolungma” or “Sagarmatha,” and you’ll seemingly earn clean stares.
Although the world’s tallest mountain was Chomolungma (“Goddess Mom of the World”) to Tibetans, and Sagarmatha (“Peak of Heaven”) to the Nepalese for hundreds of years earlier than it was proclaimed Everest by Britain’s Royal Geographical Society in 1865, at this time, a lot of the world is aware of this summit by its British deal with.
George Everest himself objected to the moniker; he prioritized native names throughout his tenure as Britain’s surveyor basic of India. Succeeding basic surveyor Andrew Waugh bestowed his predecessor’s unwilling surname to the world’s highest peak and wrote in a letter: “I used to be taught by my revered chief and predecessor, Colonel Sir George Everest, to assign to each geographical object its true native or native appellation. However here’s a mountain, likely the very best on the earth, with none native identify that we will uncover, whose native appellation, if it has any, won’t very seemingly be ascertained earlier than we’re allowed to penetrate into Nepal.”
Upon “penetration” into the mountainous nation with whom Tibet shares the Himalayan apex, colonial surveyors found that the mountain did, in truth, possess native appellations. Chomolungma is a nucleus of non secular thought for the Sherpa folks they usually had been suspicious of early British expeditioners—did the keen Europeans search a mountaintop or valuable minerals? The explorers in flip had been amazed by the Sherpa people’s lack of a word for “summit.”
The grand uplift of limestone referred to as Everest by every other identify can be the tallest on the earth. However names possess the facility of signification. The erasure of indigenous names for standard pure formations uproots the cultural id of native teams from the locations they named centuries earlier than the primary European surveyors tagged landmarks with the surnames of their friends.
It could be the peak of human self-importance to recommend {that a} sure identify is the “actual” one for any pure formation; in any case, these options shaped hundreds of thousands, generally billions of years earlier than our species existed. An ethos of humility is mirrored in lots of indigenous names for landmarks, versus the nomenclatural type of dedicating peaks to standout residents.
Contemplating the historic and modern dispossession of land and livelihood of indigenous peoples by nation-states worldwide, elevating indigenous names to standard utilization is one method to account for this legacy of erasure. Names carry associations, and on this sense we will encourage an indigenous id of our pure landforms in a single phrase.
In the USA, rivalry over public land use is inseparable from indigenous sovereignty, as most public lands are ancestral tribal territories. The names of numerous natural formations mirror this actuality: the Grand Canyon was Ongtupqa (“Salt Canyon”) to its Hopi inhabitants; New Hampshire’s Mount Washington was Agiocochook (“House of the Nice Spirit”) by the native Abenaki folks; Mount Rainier was Tahoma or Takoma to the Lushootseed-speaking tribes of coastal Washington.
The Koyukon Athabascan folks of Alaska received a high-profile fight in 2015 to revive the identify Denali (“nice one” or “excessive one”), rather than “Mount McKinley,” to the state’s highest peak. In line with Andrew Cowell, director of the College of Colorado’s Heart for Native American and Indigenous Research, returning to the identify Denali is “symbolic of a renewed dedication to fairness in our society, and a valuing of the contributions of indigenous folks to America’s nationwide heritage.”
Cowell additionally factors out that whereas disputes of this nature are sometimes characterised as “white vs. native,” the state of Alaska had already reinstated “Denali” in official paperwork and information. It was lawmakers from Ohio who opposed the reversion; they fought to uphold the McKinley moniker in deference to William McKinley, twenty fifth President of the USA and an Ohio native. As just lately as 2018, authorities officers from Ohio have petitioned President Donald Trump to alter the height’s official identify again to McKinley.
(Editor’s be aware: As we all know, this has since occurred.)
Cowell cuts to the core of why we label: we wish names to have which means. “I believe we wish our place names to be related to collective historical past and expertise, and to derive from that native collective historical past and expertise. In lots of instances, the unique Native American names are the perfect expression of that ideally suited.”
McKinley’s tenure as President in the course of the gold rush in America’s “final frontier” and advocacy of the gold normal for American forex prompted a prospector to dub the mountain “McKinley.” After his assassination in 1901, a mourning public supported the dedication of the height in his identify. The gesture was noble, however McKinley contributed little to the native historical past of the Denali space.
Cowell provides that Euro-American nomenclature will not be inappropriate in each state of affairs. Take, for instance, Mills Glacier of Colorado’s standard Rocky Mountain Nationwide Park and Grinnell Glacier of Montana’s Glacier Nationwide Park. Naturalists Enos Mills and George Hen Grinnell had been instrumental within the creation of the nationwide parks during which they’re honored by devoted landmark names. Whereas the pure formations could have carried established indigenous aliases, Mills and Grinnell earned official recognition by working to guard their respective landscapes.
We regularly overlook that the official names of innumerable American locales are derived from indigenous phrases, together with, for instance, over thirty states, and main cities like Chicago and Miami. Kentucky is a by-product of the Iroquoian phrase which means “of the sector,” and North and South Dakota are outgrowths of the Sioux dahkota (“pal” or “ally”).
Indigenous nomenclature permeates the American panorama and populates the American lexicon, however the roots of state names are too usually erased by time. Even when indigenous names for mountains and different landmarks had been popularized, would they finally lose their indigenous significations?
Cowell thinks that the naming and signification course of is perpetual: “Place names should be saved alive, as residing, significant names, by the group—generally the local people, generally the nationwide group.”
It’s on us to raise the context. “And generally, the very combat to get a renaming accomplished implies that these new names have endurance,” Cowell continues. “The place is ‘renewed’ in a way by a brand new identify and a brand new story…thereby deepen[ing] our collective data of historical past and assist[ing] us reconnect to native views.”
There is no such thing as a good repair, and to acknowledge one indigenous group’s identify for a landmark could obscure many others. For instance, the US Geographic Names System lists 36 variants of Native American names for Alaska’s highest mountain. Names will not be future, however they do convey our concepts of the future of a cherished place. Think about the newsreel of subsequent 12 months’s Everest season with “Sagarmatha” or “Chomolungma” rather than “Everest” within the headlines. Names beget tales. What’s in a reputation? The story of a sacred place, a displaced folks, and a reminiscence price remembering.
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