New law will remove the word ‘squaw’ from California place names, so many more are being proposed
If you call the Indian reservation in California’s San Gabriel Mountains ‘Squaw Peak,’ you probably made a mistake. At least now, thanks to a new law, that mistake can be corrected.
The new law, passed in the state assembly by the Democrat-majority leadership, not only replaces ‘Squaw Peak’ with ‘Tribe Peak,’ but adds ‘Mountain Peaks,’ a reference to the state’s mountainous geography, to the list.
For a quick rundown of what the new law means, check it out in our explainer. You can also watch a short clip below:
The law comes amid a surge of proposals to rename California’s westernmost and most populated Indian reservations. In the past few years, more than 350 names have been proposed, to include those for areas just west of San Francisco in California’s Bay Area, the Klamath River Indian Reservation, the Mendocino Indian Health Care Authority, the Russian and Chukchi Reservation, the San Francisco Metropolitan Area, the Santa Rosa Indian Reservation, and the Upper Klamath Indian Reservation in Oregon to name just a few.
The Bay Area’s ‘Tribe Peak’ is now officially known as ‘Mountain Peaks
This latest move in the California Indian naming game may not mean that those proposals have won out, but it gives more reason to hope.
That is because the new law is not just changing the names of existing reservations, but creating a new category that will be able to draw on an existing body of law that protects Native American tribes from commercial exploitation. State law already allows for names to be changed to protect the cultural identities of Native American tribes. (We can thank then-Gov. Jerry Brown and then-Attorney General Bill Lockyer for that, and for the state’s status as the nation’s leading center for Indian law.)
New law will remove the word’squaw’ from California place names, so many more are being proposed
The new law comes in a legislative session that had the power to approve up to 20 more names for the state’s Indian reservations in a single day. That was especially possible given the absence of a quorum at the time