This essay was initially revealed in September 2019. While a lot has modified within the intervening interval, in some ways these phrases are much more related immediately than they had been six years in the past. In mild of the Trump Administration’s January 20 choice to vary the federally designated title 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” evokes common recognition and awe, however inform a gaggle of mates of your imminent plans to summit “Chomolungma” or “Sagarmatha,” and you’ll probably earn clean stares.
Though the world’s tallest mountain was Chomolungma (“Goddess Mother of the World”) to Tibetans, and Sagarmatha (“Peak of Heaven”) to the Nepalese for 1000’s of years earlier than it was proclaimed Everest by Britain’s Royal Geographical Society in 1865, immediately, 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. But here’s a mountain, most likely the very best on the planet, with none native title that we will uncover, whose native appellation, if it has any, won’t very probably 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 reality, possess native appellations. Chomolungma is a nucleus of religious 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 folks’s lack of a phrase for “summit.”
The grand uplift of limestone referred to as Everest by another title can be the tallest on the planet. But names possess the ability of signification. The erasure of indigenous names for widespread pure formations uproots the cultural identification 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 vainness to recommend {that a} sure title is the “actual” one for any pure formation; in spite of everything, these options shaped tens of millions, 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 fashion of dedicating peaks to standout residents.
Considering the historic and up to date dispossession of land and livelihood of indigenous peoples by nation-states worldwide, elevating indigenous names to widespread utilization is one approach to account for this legacy of erasure. Names carry associations, and on this sense we will encourage an indigenous identification of our pure landforms in a single phrase.
In the United States, rivalry over public land use is inseparable from indigenous sovereignty, as most public lands are ancestral tribal territories. The names of quite a few pure formations mirror this actuality: the Grand Canyon was Ongtupqa (“Salt Canyon”) to its Hopi inhabitants; New Hampshire’s Mount Washington was Agiocochook (“Home of the Great 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 gained a high-profile battle in 2015 to revive the title Denali (“nice one” or “excessive one”), rather than “Mount McKinley,” to the state’s highest peak. According to Andrew Cowell, director of the University of Colorado’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, returning to the title 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 United States and an Ohio native. As just lately as 2018, authorities officers from Ohio have petitioned President Donald Trump to vary the height’s official title 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 that means. “I feel we wish our place names to be linked to collective historical past and expertise, and to derive from that native collective historical past and expertise. In many instances, the unique Native American names are the very best expression of that ultimate.”
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 title. The gesture was noble, however McKinley contributed little to the native historical past of the Denali space.
Cowell provides that Euro-American nomenclature just isn’t inappropriate in each state of affairs. Take, for instance, Mills Glacier of Colorado’s widespread Rocky Mountain National Park and Grinnell Glacier of Montana’s Glacier National Park. Naturalists Enos Mills and George Bird Grinnell had been instrumental within the creation of the nationwide parks during which they’re honored by devoted landmark names. While the pure formations could have carried established indigenous aliases, Mills and Grinnell earned official recognition by working to guard their respective landscapes.
We typically 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 spinoff of the Iroquoian phrase that 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 typically erased by time. Even if 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 must be saved alive, as dwelling, significant names, by the neighborhood—generally the local people, generally the nationwide neighborhood.”
It’s on us to raise the context. “And generally, the very battle to get a renaming finished signifies that these new names have endurance,” Cowell continues. “The place is ‘renewed’ in a way by a brand new title and a brand new story…thereby deepen[ing] our collective data of historical past and assist[ing] us reconnect to native views.”
There isn’t any good repair, and to acknowledge one indigenous group’s title 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 is probably not future, however they do convey our concepts of the future of a cherished place. Imagine the newsreel of subsequent yr’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.