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Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
One year ago, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland issued a declaration to remove the S-Q word, a slur against Indigenous women, from place names on federal lands.
Nearly 650 new names were finalized this fall — including in Dillingham.
As KDLG’s Izzy Ross reports, three elementary students had pushed to change the name long before the federal government started its process.
Alora Wassily, Trista Wassily, and Harmony Larson have worked to change the creek’s name since 2021. That finally happened in September.
In an interview shortly after the announcement, Alora said they had put a lot of effort into reaching that goal.
“It feels good because we worked on it for so long and it finally got changed and we just feel relieved. We felt accomplished.”
They began advocating for the change when they were in fifth grade, after they heard a local story about seven sisters who had lived along the creek, and how both the creek and a road of the same name were marked with the derogatory word.
“Then we thought about it and then we decided to change it and then we talked to our teacher, Ms. Jensen, when we were in fifth grade. And then we talked with Courtenay Carty and Robyn [Chaney] and then we just started researching about other places and then we started working on a presentation.”
Now they’re in seventh grade.
The students have presented their research many times. They started with the Dillingham Parent Advisory Committee and the school board.
“We were all really nervous our first time. And after a while we got used to it and we just got normal about it.”
Since then, they have brought their research to the Curyung Tribal Council, the First Alaskans Institute Elders and Youth Conference, and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.
Robyn Chaney helped the students prepare. She’s the Federal Programs Coordinator for Dillingham city schools and has been an adult advisor for the students.
“Them standing behind their information was really powerful. They were part of educating people here, including myself. They received mostly positive feedback and support. And really their confidence grew because their facts are accurate and it was an issue that obviously became really important, not just to us, but on a federal level that Secretary Haaland would take that up.”
When Sec. Haaland announced last year that the word would be removed from geographic features across the country, the students’ work got more attention. And they had to shift their approach, taking their grassroots advocacy and fitting it into a political process.
“Our process went from slow and steady to very, very rapid,” Chaney said. “It shifted from us educating and garnering local support for change to a government-to-government relationship, following a tribal process and doing tribal consultation between our local Curyung Tribe and the federal government.”
The students recommended renaming the creek Al’a Creek, and they received broad support from the community during a listening session last spring. But at the last minute, a Curyung Tribal Council member suggested a different name: Amau Creek.
Chaney says that was difficult.
“It was just a hard pill to swallow because that name hadn’t gone through the public process. It was in their regular meeting, but it wasn’t a name that had been carried forward in the public process that they set forth. It was surprising and upsetting,” Chaney said. “But they still achieved the goal, which was to remove a derogatory place name and replace it with a traditional name, a Yugtun name that has positive connotations for a woman. And that happened.”
The students are the latest in a long legacy of work to re-center Native place names in Bristol Bay. Francisca Demoski is the land manager for the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.
Yup’ik introduction: “Cama’i….Hi my name is Francisca Demoski. I am from Togiak but live here in Anchorage.”
She oversees the land department’s cultural heritage efforts, including the Bristol Bay Native Place Names project. She says it’s one of the ways the corporation celebrates and preserves that heritage.
“Amau Creek translates to ‘great-grandparent’ and is a Yugtun word. And in this case it references a group of sisters, or great-grandmothers, who, according to traditional stories, traveled to the area and settled near the creek. So the community recognized the role of the great-grandmothers in their families and chose the name to honor their ancestors.”
Demoski said the Native corporation supports the federal efforts to change the derogatory names of places across the country, including in Dillingham.
“BBNC is pleased with the outcome and I applaud the young students for taking leadership in making this change happen for their community.”
Demoski helped start the corporation’s project almost 20 years ago, in 2003. It now has over 1,400 place names on the website. Many are from the areas around Togiak, Manokotak, Dillingham and along the
Nushagak River. There are also many Dena’ina and Yup’ik contributions from around Iliamna Lake.
“I am working with the Bristol Bay Native Education Foundation to gather place names along the Alaska Peninsula, including the Naknek area. So that’s where we’re focusing right now, because there’s very limited data in that area.”
Demoski hopes this year’s push to change derogatory names around the country inspires communities to consider Native place names for themselves. She says it’s been done before; she points to the example of Utqiaġvik, which used to be named Barrow.
“And ensuring the survival of our people’s cultural history is of the utmost importance to us, and place names is one way that we ensure that our history is being preserved for a future generation.”
The students’ work isn’t over. They are now focused on the next steps to change the community’s signs and replace them with the new name: Amau Creek.
President Joe Biden plans to designate the nation’s newest national monument in southern Nevada.
As Arizona Public Radio’s Ryan Heinsius reports, the 450,000-acre expanse is sacred to at least a dozen tribes.
The Avi Kwa Ame National Monument would include Spirit Mountain and the surrounding Mohave Desert landscape 80 miles south of Las Vegas.
It’s considered the origin point for the Hualapai, Havasupai, Maricopa, and several other tribes, and is also a sacred site for the Hopi.
The 5,600-foot peak itself was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 for its tribal significance.
Indigenous leaders and environmental groups say the designation will connect several other biologically diverse protected areas and provide vital habitat and migration corridors for bighorn sheep, desert tortoise, and other species.
The new monument would span an area in the southern tip of Nevada between Arizona and the Colorado River to the California Mohave National Preserve.
President Biden made the announcement at the recent White House Tribal Nations Summit.
The designation hasn’t been made final, but tribes, conservationists, and others applauded the announcement.
The Antiquities Act gives presidents the power to enact broad protections on public lands.
President Biden last year restored the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah after they were slashed by the Trump administration in 2017.
There are currently 130 national monuments throughout the U.S.
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The Interior Department is putting $75 million toward community relocation efforts for three tribes in Alaska and Washington state, that are struggling with the consequences of a changing climate.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) Wednesday announced the introduction of a bill that aims to provide more support for homeless Native veterans.
