Over 600 federally owned sites have been renamed to remove a racial slur, the U.S. Department of Interior announced Thursday. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the word “squaw,” a derogatory term for Native American women, should have been nixed a long time ago. Nearly 70 Indigenous American tribes were consulted on the name changes, which included renaming California’s “Squaw Valley” to “Olympic Valley” for being the 1960 Winter Olympic Games host site. Haaland, the first Native American to lead an administrative department, said she felt obligated to use her position to make public sites more accessible. “That starts with removing racist and derogatory names that have graced federal locations for far too long,” she said. Along with issuing a list of name changes, the Department of Interior has asked the public to help find other federal locations with offensive titles.
