Marty Durlin

Online Editor

There are more than 800 geographic landforms in the U.S. with the word “squaw” in them, according to a piece by Hadley Robinson for Gelf. Native Americans in 1999 asked the U.S. Board of Geographic Names (BGN) to change all of them. In 1963, the BGN changed all place names with “nigger” to “negro” (143 of them), and in 1974, all “Jap” names to “Japanese.” But in the case of squaw, although some say the term is a perversion of the French word for “vagina,” or a shortened form for the same term from the Mohawk word “ojiskwa” — others say it means simply “woman,” and there’s no consensus on what word to exchange.

Squaw Peak near Phoenix (2600 feet), once known as Squaw Tit Peak, was renamed after Lori Piestewa in 2003 by the Arizona Board of Geographic and Historic Names. The board waived its five-year waiting period at the request of Gov. Janet Napolitano to honor Piestewa, a Hopi who was the first woman in the U.S. armed forces killed in the Iraq war and the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving with the U.S. military.

With no national mandate from the BNG to change “squaw” names in a wholesale manner, local governments and state name boards have the decision-making responsibility. (In protest of state legislation in Minnesota to change all “squaw” names, officials of Lake County offered to change Squaw Creek to Politically Correct Creek.)

The BGN will decide April 10 whether to officially change Phoenix’s Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak.