Reindigenizing Place Names

Members of the Name Change Committee are very pleased to announce that the US Board of Geographic Names has approved the name change of “Squaw Point” on the Eld Inlet beach of The Evergreen State College to the ancestral indigenous name. The place name “Bushoowah-ahlee Point” was requested in a joint application by The Evergreen State College and the Squaxin Island Tribe to identify the northernmost point of the campus.

The beach sits on a cape which is on the property of the college (by the Geoduck House), but also a part of the territory ceded by tribal leaders in the 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek.  The land has long been recognized as a meeting point for the Coast Salish people living on the southern inlets of the Salish Sea.

The effort to rename the point began during fall 2010 when a group of staff were reviewing maps of the campus for hazard mitigation purposes. Members of the Evergreen staff were surprised to see that a portion of the college’s property on Eld Inlet was designated as “Squaw Point.” While the roots of the term “squaw” lie in the Algonquin language on the East Coast, it has evolved to take on a more derogatory meaning that is not an appropriate reference for indigenous women, and certainly not the indigenous women of the Coast Salish region, thousands of miles removed from Algonquin territory.

With the support of the college, a group of faculty, staff and students has been meeting to initiate a change in the name. The group includes Longhouse personnel, student members from the Native Student Alliance and First Peoples’ Advising Services along with other staff and faculty. I extend special thanks to my fellow name change committee members Tina Kuckkahn-Miller, Laura Grabhorn, Frances Rains, Zoltan Grossman, Raquel Salinas, Rich Davis, Derek Jones and Shonri Begay.

Our group consulted with the Squaxin Island Tribe, upon whose land The Evergreen State College sits and with whom it has a long-standing positive relationship. The State of Washington encourages state agencies to work directly with tribes (on issues such as this name change) as part of the 1989 Centennial Accord and the 1999 New Millennium Agreement, which encourages government-to-government collaborative actions which benefit both entities.

Squaxin Island appointed Lushootseed language scholar Zalmai Zahir to research the ancestral name of the area. Mr. Zahir had worked for many years with the late Vi Hilbert (Upper Skagit) who was the region’s primary Lushootseed language expert and scholar on indigenous place names of the region around the Salish Sea.

Mr. Zahir documented the original place name in Thomas Talbot Waterman’s 1922 book Puget Sound Geography. Waterman was an anthropologist who was most interested in recording Native languages and cultures and depicting how those languages appeared phonetically. He traveled widely in the area and among the many things he collected, he also collected geographic names. A recent reproduction (by Vi Hilbert, Jay Miller, and Zalmai Zahir) contains Waterman’s original manuscript. T.T. Waterman lists the name of the point as B1cuwa’3ali, (1= uh, c=sh, and 3= glottal stop in his orthography).

The name Bushoowah-ahlee is very old and there isn’t a comparable English translation. The Squaxin Island Tribe has requested that the phonetic spelling of the name in the Roman alphabet be officially adopted, rather than the Lushootseed alphabet, which uses diacritical marks. By using the ancestral name, Bushoowah-ahlee Point, we are reminded of the history of this place that goes much further back in time than the mid-nineteenth century and offers us the chance to appreciate the area as it was originally known.

As of September 15, 2011, the US Board on Geographic Names recognized the beach officially by its original name. Bushoowah-ahlee Point is now in the USBGN’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). At the Washington State level, Caleb Maki of the Washington Board on Geographic Names has directed the Washington DNR cartography office to change Squaw Point to Bushoowah-ahlee Point on any new state maps. The change is automatic on all federal maps, according to faculty member Zoltan Grossman.

The name change enjoyed tremendous support from the Evergreen community and students working with First People’s Advising gathered about 300 letters of support from students, staff and faculty for the name change.  The Board of Trustees also offered its support for the change, and a Geoduck Student Union initiative was backed by 87 percent of students in the Spring 2010 election.

Next spring, there will be a celebration, to mark the official name change, to coincide with Day of Absence/Day of Presence and the official start of the Salish new year.

For more information:

Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic

Reindigenizing Place Names powerpoint
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/ReindigenizingPlaceNames.ppt