Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Anchor: Antonia Gonzales
Hundreds of geographic features and landmarks in the United States will soon have new names, including 28 sites in Wisconsin. Those sites currently hold the name of a derogatory term for Indigenous women. WXPR’s Erin Gottsacker spoke with a mother and daughter from the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa about what the change means to them.
Dee Ann Allen is used to hearing slurs slung her way because of her race. She went to Lakeland Union High School at the peak of the spearfishing controversy, and was taunted by protesters and classmates alike.
“It was always a negative, foul swear word they were saying to bring you down,” she recalls.
A generation later, those derogatory terms haven’t gone away. Allen’s daughter, Kenadi Mayo, reports similar experiences.
“I was a good volleyball athlete, so even in high school, in the areas up here, at the schools I’d go to, I’d be slurred at from the stands because I was so good, but also because it was very obvious I was a native player, and a woman.”
These jeers and slurs aren’t just thrown about casually by high school rivals, they’re written into the names of streets and lakes and creeks across Wisconsin. That includes the Northwoods, in Vilas, Forest, Lincoln, Langlade and Price counties. But soon, some of those names will change.
U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has ordered geographic features with the offensive term to be renamed. For indigenous women like Allen, that is a big deal.
“This is one word – s**** – that will give hope to Indigenous women, that they mean more than that term.”
Federal officials are now seeking ideas from the public for new names for these sites.
Allen hopes some can take on the names they were originally given by Indigenous people hundreds of years ago.
“It’s like we’re carrying those messages from our mothers and grandmothers that are no longer here, that have fought so hard back then in more difficult situations, and hopefully they are up there looking down and smiling that it’s gotten to this point in time.”
It’s a point in time that Allen hopes marks a shift, so that her newborn granddaughter can grow up in a better world.
A new medical facility on the Navajo Nation in Arizona is nearly complete. As Arizona Public Radio’s Ryan Heinsius reports, it’ll eventually serve thousands of people on the Southwest portion of the reservation.
Construction of the 154,000-square-foot Dilkon Medical Center began in 2019. Crews faced setbacks along the way because of shortages of building materials and COVID-19-related supply chain issues. Nonetheless, the facility is set to open this summer almost two years ahead of schedule.
The medical center includes isolation rooms that were specially built to separate COVID patients, and the hospital will utilize solar panels and natural lighting to lower energy costs. It’ll also include on-site housing to accommodate more than a hundred staff members and medical personnel. Tribal leaders including Navajo President Jonathan Nez recently toured the facility, which they say is 95 percent complete. Currently, residents of Dilkon and other surrounding rural communities have to drive 40 minutes to the off-reservation city of Winslow for the nearest medical care.
Officials will hold an opening ceremony in July and expect the hospital to begin accepting patients in August. The limited number of medical facilities on the Navajo Nation faced critical staff, bed and supply shortages during the height of the pandemic, and COVID patients were frequently taken off the reservation for care. At one point in 2020, the tribe had the highest per capita rate of new coronavirus infections in the nation.
Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our newsletter today.
