WASHINGTON — Today, on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the members of the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, a federal advisory group to help identify and recommend changes to derogatory terms still in use for places throughout the country.
In November 2021, Secretary Haaland issued Secretary’s Order 3405, which proposed a new Federal Advisory Committee tasked to broadly solicit, review and recommend changes to derogatory geographic and federal land unit names. Committee tasks will include developing a process to solicit and assist with proposals to the Secretary to identify and change derogatory names and will engage with Tribes, the Native Hawaiian Community, state and local governments, and the public. A separate federal task force (the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force) was established by Secretary’s Order 3404 to focus exclusively on the sq-word, a derogatory term in use more than 650 instances within federal land units alone.
Read more.