VitiligoSuch a wack decision to change the name like this. Obviously this name hasn’t been an issue until recent years.
The word Squaw started as a term for older Native American woman and eventually some tribes used it as a derogatory term toward those women.
What does this have to do with a ski resort? Maybe instead of getting rid of any sign of the people who claimed the land before the people who came in after, maybe keeping the name or changing it to something that reflected the people who used to occupy the land would’ve been a better decision. Now, anyone who doesn’t know the history of the land won’t ever relate it to the people who were there before, just the corporation that owns it.
This change was purely a part of the “woke” initiative in CA called the “Re-examining Our Past Initiative”. Just more white people wanting to bring up issues that aren’t realllly issues because they have nothing else to complain about in life. Just like the studies done for the Red skins NFL team and other professional teams, i bet if you did the same for here, a far majority would rather have their people represented in some way than no way at all. The woke crowd needs to go back to sleep and let people speak up for themselves. End rant.
I agree that no one likes having their traditions and lifestyles fussed with. For example, the Washoe people did not appreciate having their homeland seized, their people brutalized and forcibly relocated, their culture decimated, their language nearly, and then being relegated- for at least a century- to a position of near political powerlessness to such an extent their former lands gets labeled with a racial slur used by the aggressors in the aforementioned campaign of violence.
What's the word "squaw" have to do with skiing? As a racial and sexual slur for Native women (and it is by the way, ask any Native person or barring that just google it) who still experience sexual assault at 3x the rate as American women of all other races and murder rates 10x higher than national average, it has nothing to do with skiing, so why use it in the first place? At this point people should know the United States was once occupied entirely by indigenous people. Today there exist 500+ sovereign Native nations in the US. You are right that there should probably be further acknowledgements (and in the opinion of many more concrete, economic restitutions) made on behalf of Palisades Tahoe that they operate on the ancestral and unceded land of the Washoe people.
It has been an issue for decades. The Washoe Tribal Council has been lobbying for this name change for many years. In light of the history of violence against them, if the Washoe people want the name changed because represents and celebrates a dark chapter of American and Washoe history, it should be changed. Yes, the current political climate of "wokeness" as you say likely contributed to management's decision to change the name, but that just means you should be mad at the board of Palisades for capitalizing off the "woke" wave instead changing the name in good faith and in response to the calls of tribal leaders for the past few decades. In the end, its
"positive step forward" for the Washoe people, a totally trivial name change for the skiers, and a bit of a headache to change the signs, etc. for the ski area.
