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President Trump’s decision to rename Mt. Denali back to its former name of Mt. McKinley has touched off the usual outrage from politicians, media types and activists whose only knowledge of the country’s Pre-Columbian tribal population comes from Kevin Costner movies and shows.
Mt. Denali, they insist, was the original ‘indigenous’ name for Mt. McKinley. But the National Park Service notes that, “no fewer than nine Native groups… used unique names for the mountain. There are five Athabascan languages surrounding the park, each with its own oral place name.”
And Mt. Denali is not even the right tribal name.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who co-sponsored the bill to change Mt. McKinley’s name to Mt. Denali, attacked Trump’s decision because, in her words, Mt. McKinley “must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”
Nearly everything the senator wrote in that brief tweet is wrong. The Athabascans don’t call themselves that, they use the name ‘Dena’. The term was made up by a Democrat official.
How one ‘stewards’ a 20,000 foot mountain is an interesting question. Did they brush the snow off the sides and polish the peaks? And “since time immemorial”, a phrase often used in land acknowledgements, would only date back to the tribal crossings across the Bering Strait. The history of this group of the Athabaskans traces back around a thousand years, “time immemorial” turns out to be around the time of William of Normandy and the Holy Roman Empire or less than 500 years before the European discovery of America.
But the entire point is moot because Mt. McKinley isn’t in the territory of the Koyukon.
The mountain is actually located in the territory of the Athabascan Dena’ina who called it Dghelay Ka’a. So why was there a push to name it Mt. Denali and not Mt. Dghelay Ka’a?
Good luck naming a truck, a college or a whole bunch of companies Dghelay Ka’a.
Denali (or at least once it was compressed from the original ‘deenaalee’) is much more marketable than Dghelay Ka’a. Choosing Denali over Dghelay Ka’a was about Americans picking an easy to pronounce palatable name that still sounded exotic and tribal.
The name Mt. Denali wasn’t chosen by tribal peoples, but by Charles Sheldon, a politically connected silver mining tycoon, big game hunter and explorer, who was friends with Theodore Roosevelt. Sheldon liked camping in Alaska, but was no great scholar of the local tribes.
Advocates claim that calling it Mt. McKinley is colonialism and that calling it Mt. Denali pays homage to tribal peoples, but either one is in use only because the name sounded good to Americans. America is full of real or fake Indian names that the settlers chose to use.
There is no ‘original’ name for Mt. McKinley: there are apparently at least a dozen. Picking and choosing which one we would use was a choice that Americans, not tribal peoples, made.
What most of the names used had in common was they meant something like ‘big mountain’.
Denali is not some deep sacred lore. It means “tall one”. The Dena’ina name of Dghelay Ka’a means “big mountain”. So does the Deg Hit’an Athabascan name of ‘Tenada’ which the Russians used before they switched over to calling it ‘Bolshaya Gora’ which means, you probably guessed it, big mountain. Mt. McKinley is about the only name for the mountain that doesn’t mean something like ‘big mountain’’ in ten different languages.
“The Indians who have lived for countless generations in the presence of these colossal mountains have given them names that are both euphonious and appropriate,” Charles Sheldon complained. “Can it be denied that the names they gave to the most imposing features of their country should be preserved? Can it be too late to make an exception to current geographic rules and restore these beautiful names—names so expressive of the mountains themselves, and so symbolic of the Indians who bestowed them?”
It’s unclear if Sheldon, the man who gave us the name Mt. Denali, ever understood that all the “expressive” Indian names were just different ways of saying “big mountain”.
But then the name ‘Alaska’ really means something like ‘big land’.
Westerners seeking spirituality in the tribal peoples in the area assumed that living without technology they were more deeply connected to nature and their names were filled with meaning. In reality the names were often quite practical and not especially significant.
The romanticisation of tribal peoples was itself a form of colonialism. The insistence on ‘reverting’ to tribal names leads to a farce in which the wrong names associated with the wrong tribes are used and those names turn out to mean absolutely nothing of any significance.
The only reason there is any interest in what we call Mt. McKinley is that mountaineers began trying to climb the mountain shortly before a push was launched to make it a national park. Tourism became a lucrative source of income for local tribes. The people who actually climbed the mountain were usually tourists from the lower 48. Calling it Mt. McKinley helped sell the federal government on the idea by associating it with a martyred president. Climbers preferred to call it Mt. Denali over Mt. McKinley because of the exoticism of the name. Naturalists liked the idea that they were preserving an untouched wilderness by using Indian names. The argument about what to call Mt. McKinley was always a dispute among Americans. And it was always about the best way to market the mountain and the land around it to other Americans.
There are only 2,300 Koyukon left. And only about 300 of them speak the language that the name ‘Denali’ comes from. What they most need is economic development, not linguistics.
Obama’s Interior Secretary Sally Jewell had insisted on pushing the Denali name change. Two years earlier, she had visited an Aleutian town mostly populated by members of the Agdaagux people and refused to allow them to build a road in an area where 19 people had already died due to lack of medical care. The road would have made it easier to evacuate patients to the nearest hospital, but Jewell told them, “I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals.” The animals in question were wildfowl whose lives mattered more than theirs did.
The Trump administration tried to build a road in its first term, but was overridden by two federal judges. Over a decade later, the case is still pending and more patients have likely died.
The western liberals who will fight to the death to use the incorrect name from a dead language for a mountain just to be able to call it ‘big mountain’ in a tribal language will also let members of tribes die rather than allow any development that would spoil their idea of an untouched Alaska.
Quit changing names just to appease the typical small minded group of Useful Idiots quit changing the names of Birds as well Stop the PC Nonsense RIGHT NOW!
Tobacco being the biggest native American contribution to the world, I honor them every Columbus Day. I buy a pouch of Red Man Chewing Tobacco in tribute to thier fine offering.
What about syphilis? That was pretty significant too.
As for myself I’m partial to tomatoes, potatoes and corn.
Edible plants native to the Americas cannot be considered a indigenous contribution – or were you being sarcastic?
Part of our government was based on the Iroquois Confederation of Tribes. A considerable part of a template based on the five tribes was used in writing the constitution and defining/an inspiration for our republic. Much like the founding fathers used Greek and Roman civilization and England as an inspiration.
Plus Indian women are hot.
Changing names by the left is just a fraud aimed at destroying our “Tonal” in Castaneda terms (sorry I don’t know a better way of describing it).
We had a local landmark we used to drive by on the freeway, called “Squaw Rock” (a tall rock with the usual romantic stories about it, like Indian lovers jumping off). The Dems renamed it “Frog Woman Rock”. Maybe Trump can change it back to Squaw Rock 🙂
There’s a mountain in Phoenix that was called Squaw Peak for decades. In the 90s, it was said that “squaw” was a Native American slang for female genitalia (no idea if that’s true). It was renamed Piestewa Peak, after the name of the first female soldier killed in the Gulf War, who happened to be a Native American from Arizona. I have no problem with honoring her, but the whole renaming thing is nuts. A friend lives on a street that was always Robert E. Lee, but of course, that’s no good, so now it’s “Desert Cactus”. Ugh.
C word pejorative
Squaw meant woman.
https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/94999/squaw%20article%20on%20web%20page.pdf
Woke revisionists tried to claim that it had an offensive meaning to justify banning it.
Maybe some Dems can jump off of it.
Ah, the noble red man. Fundamental to early pre-Revolutionary literature and a staple of colonial fiction (c.f. Rudyard Kipling). Feel good by saying or writing nice things about folks to whom you believe you are superior.
That sounds like modern leftism. Cry for a group. But behind the scenes you wouldn’t want them in your family.
What it really was … was the idea that you’re own people are inferior compared to the toadies sucking up for some lucre. Mainly because European peasants would not acknowledge your superiority without the force of law.
Liberals say Denali means “The Great One” in Alaska native language. What a load of crap. They don’t even have a word for “great”. Why would you even care about its name when you live in one of the 292 recognized villages in Alaska enduring abject poverty; high rates alcoholism; and, the highest rate of sexual assaults in the country: under a tribal system that is the epitome of a failed socialist system. Besides, the name “Mt. Mckinley” sings!
It meant big or tall. And yes, there are much bigger problems than the name of the mountain.
Name it after the Democratic Party. Call it Mt. Run-a-muck.
Throw an “a” on the end of that and i think you’ve got a good one that sounds native to the wisdom of the dems,
Mt. Runamucka
Say it slowly and with a deeper voice like in the movies to give it that authentic native sound that’s synonymous with “ancient wisdom”.
Another Obama “American transformation “ bites the dust. He even renamed himself.
Two thoughts:
1. Please do NOT go the way of Minneapolis (renaming Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska; easy pronunciation helps awareness of place names).
2. Why not just call Denali/McKinley what the locals did, but in English: “Big Mountain” (or maybe “Helluva Big Mountain”, since its prominence is exceptionally impressive)?
The American Indians as per de Tocqueville owed nothing and were basically warring nomads who sought to obliterate each other Mount McMinldy is the proper name of that majestic peak
Yeah, they didn’t have the same concepts of property in their culture that we do. That’s something the left always leaves out of the debate.
I am Alaskan conservative and against the massive attempt to re-name everything an indigenous name. Some counterpoints:
1) President McKinley, while he may have had other positive qualities, never set foot in the state.
2) The majority of Alaskans — something like 2/3 of our state — called it Denali even when it was named Mt. McKinley the first time.
3) Our representation in Washington asked Obama for the change in part because residents wanted it. Despite those who may have used the effort to further their own claims of colonialist history, the naming of this mountain is a different situation.
4) The majority of Alaskans will continue to call it Denali even now. We don’t appreciate those from Outside telling us what to name our landmarks.
5) And yet: the federal government owns a great deal of Alaska land, Denali National Park and Preserve is among its holdings. So I’ll give you that — federal land, federal landmark. Yet we are no strangers to fed-state disagreement. There is a unique attitude and sense of ownership up here, which may be difficult to understand if you are from the ‘Lower 48.’
6) Additional context, in support of returning to Mt. McKinley: it was a compromise during the crafting of ANILCA.: https://mustreadalaska.com/alex-gimarc-trump-is-throwing-elbows-at-lisa-by-restoring-the-name-of-mount-mckinley/
The native contributor from Alaska over at Red State said the same thing. Alaskans call it Denali, not just those from the nazi-com singularity pushing their narratives. Even when it was called McKinley, a vast majority of the state residents still called it Denali. He wrote a nice informative article based on personal experience and actually having lived in Alaska for years. Sometimes the devil’s in the details. My opinion has been flipped by reading different perspectives when I had thought I had definitive information, twice on the subject.
Yes. Lived in Alaska for 10 years and I generally agree.
However, the whole naming and renaming thing is highly political virtue-signaling, and Lisa only offered the renaming to Obama …
… as a signal to Americans.
Like a middle finger.
I think that’s the problem. Yes, Alaskans are used to calling the mountain Denali and it’s been adopted by decades of use, but Obama did not rename the mountain out of respect for the locals – especially locals who vote Republican.
Trump is now returning the favor. And in a sense he’s disrespecting the local naming convention, but OTOH he is reversing the Obama renaming.
Compare this situation to the ‘statue’ issue and how the Left called Trump an Austrian painter because of the removal of Confederate statues.
I was about halfway through the article and enjoying it immensely, when I realized it was written by Daniel Greenfield. I love reading his stuff.
Thank you, Nan
I have been hearing this Native reverence for the land crap for over 50 years and I have to tell you that I have seen them display more reverence for the last bottle of “Hooch”.
The whole ‘indigenous’ native v. ‘colonialist’ everything is nothing more than a divisive cultural ‘color’ revolution. A litany of Big Lies and Blood Libels based on gaslighting against those of European descent.
Much of it – like everything else – offering little or nothing to the ‘indigenous.’
Where are the days to remember the wars between indians? The end of the indian slave trade? The celebration of bringing reading and writing to illiterate peoples living in the stone age? The end of human sacrifice and cannibalism? The provision for women’s rights? The introduction of medicine? The rule of law? The wheel? The horse?
I mean – I could go on and on and on.
And to be clear – as with the homosexual agenda – the actual members of the affected group do not benefit from these hate-based agendas. Unless one counts the Big Profits from the Big ‘Native’ Racial Grift. If one is not in on the game, one is just another forgotten man struggling along. Maybe with a victim card, but that’s it.
There’s plenty of nastiness in the true story of colonialism, but that’s balanced by the true benefits provided by colonialism. And it’s even more apparent when one finds out that the ‘bad’ news almost always comes from the Democrats/grifters on the colonial side while the ‘natives’ most abused by colonialists – were the ones who adopted colonial customs and prospered until some cheat wanted their land or their stuff.
Great comment. The “preservation” of these indigenous peoples always comes across, to me anyway, as something similar to “zoo keeping”. It’s like” “hey, everybody, let’s go out to the reservation and look at how ass-backwards these people are and have been for centuries. Cool, huh? We need to subsidize them and all that so we can pat ourselves on the back for being so advanced and kind enough to maintain their way of life. I gotta get me one of those headdresses!”. It’s no wonder alcoholism is so prevalent among these people. The only thing missing is the cages.
Thank you. And yes, the situation on many reservations would shock the soccer moms.
Love how you research all your posts Daniel. Unlike the drive by media. Who let their politics get in the way of the truth. Imagine the arrogance of telling Native Alaskans that the wild animals mean more to her than their very lifes!
You never go wrong following the facts. Thank you.
Language always have been used to control and manipulate the masses. This one is no different. The tyrannical left wants to make believe that it cares for the poor, the downtrodden, the hopeless . In reality it does give a hoot about anything except its own power
David: Thank You for this well written story. Truth is the best information and you are able to make it creatively interesting. Please continue to produce such work.
If anybody wishes to experience the ”spiritual nature” of the American Indians then look no further than the trash in every Reservation.
Visit Canyon Dee Che, (wrong spelling, right pronunciation) and look off the trodden path and you will see down in a gully trash thrown there like old Fridges, toilet bowls and basins, frames of motorcycles, and bicycles, empty Oil Cans surrounded by Oil stains on the ”sacred rocks” and an abundance of trash and then tell me they are treating the land as sacred.
Indians of most Tribes were first and foremost Warriors against each other and took Slaves from other Tribes as well as from Europeans whom they slaughtered and took the women as sex slaves.
Enough already with this nonsense about them being closer to the Land than the Europeans as the Colonizers stopped them from killing each other even though the Europeans killed many of them..
Its called conquest.
The Europeans gave the Indians the Horse.
The Indians gave the Europeans the Potato.
What a deal eh ?.