Obama had restored peak’s Koyukon Athabascan name, undoing designation in honor of 25th US president

Summary

Donald Trump’s pledge to rename Denali back to Mount McKinley has sparked widespread backlash, including from Indigenous Alaskans and Alaskan Republican lawmakers.

The Koyukon Athabascans, who have called the mountain Denali for centuries, consider the name sacred.

The Obama administration officially restored the Denali name in 2015 to honor Alaska Native heritage.

Polls show most Alaskans oppose the renaming, despite the state’s Republican majority.

Alaskan senators Murkowski and Sullivan criticized Trump’s move, while some, including McKinley descendants, support honoring the controversial 25th president despite his views on Native populations.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    291·
    5 days ago

    They’re not just “dismayed” (more like pissed the fuck off) because the mountain’s name was changed from its original name again.

    During McKinley’s Presidency, he continued policies of displacing, discriminatingagainst, and abusing native people. McKinley signed the Curtis Act of 1898, which took away the sovereign status of the Five Civilized Tribes, overturned treaties and abolished the tribes’ governments, invalidated their laws and dissolved their courts. The Curtis Act called for the abolition of tribal governments, and was intended to establish the concept of individual land holdings. This Act extended all provisions of the Dawes Act to the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes, making large parts of these lands open to settlement by whites. It resulted in removing an estimated 90 million acres of land formerly reserved for Native Americans.

    https://www.cityofarcata.org/DocumentCenter/View/7994/McKinley-War-and-Indigenous-Policy