Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Friday that the agency will create a process to review and replace racially derogatory terms used in the names of places on federal lands.
Haaland, the nation’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, declared the term “squaw,” a pejorative for Indigenous women, to be derogatory, and ordered the creation of procedures to replace all federal uses of the term. The word currently appears in the name of more than 650 federal land units, according to Board on Geographic Names data.
The secretary also announced the creation of a federal committee to review other derogatory names on federal land. The department, through a newly-created Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force, will consult with the public and tribal representatives on potential changes, according to the statement...