美国国家公共电台 NPR Native Americans Propose Change To Yellowstone Landmark Names

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

There is a movement to change the names of two landmarks 1 in Yellowstone National Park, the nation's oldest national park. And that is bringing to light long buried atrocities 2. Yellowstone Public Radio's Nate Hegyi has this report. And this is where I want to mention that some of the details are disturbing.

NATE HEGYI, BYLINE 3: On a cold January day more than a century ago, U.S. troops massacred nearly 200 Piikani people on a Montana riverbank. A few were young men...

STANLEY CHARLES GRIER: The rest were women and children and old folks. It's hard to imagine.

HEGYI: That's Chief Stanley Charles Grier of the Piikani nation in Alberta, Canada. And the people killed were his ancestors. Accounts of the massacre 4 are brutal 5. Soldiers killed a mother breastfeeding her baby. They shot sick people hiding under blankets.

GRIER: Survivors 6 were basically executed by axes, and that's pretty barbaric.

HEGYI: And the man who helped perpetrate this massacre was Army Lieutenant 7 Gustavus Doane. He was 29 years old then. In photos, he's wearing a soldier's uniform with combed black hair and a massive waxed mustache. Doane later went on to explore parts of Yellowstone, and his compatriots named Mount Doane after him. The name stuck. But for Chief Stanley Charles Grier, Mount Doane is a celebration of violence perpetrated against his people.

GRIER: Doane led that attack and fully 8 implemented 9 the massacre. As a result of that, we feel that's an atrocity 10 to humanity. And it's, essentially 11, a war crime.

HEGYI: Massacres 12 like this were a major part of colonizing 13 the West. And the men, like Gustavus Doane, who perpetrated them were sometimes honored with mountains, valleys and towns. Take Army General William Harney. He was nicknamed Woman Killer 14 after he helped massacre nearly 100 Lakota. But a mountain named after him was renamed in 2016. And now, tribes are trying to do something similar in Yellowstone. Last September, leaders from across North America gathered there.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHANTING)

HEGYI: A couple rode horses, and some wore cowboy hats. They were there asking the federal government to change the name of Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain. They also want to rename the iconic Hayden Valley. The person it's named after was one of the first surveyors of Yellowstone, Ferdinand Hayden. He compiled a geological survey that called for the extermination 15 of American Indians.

GRIER: He basically incited 16 this hatred 17 towards indigenous 18 peoples at that time in his policies and his written statements.

HEGYI: But, earlier this year, Park County commissioners 19 in Wyoming voted against changing Mount Doane and Hayden Valley. They said people there like the names. They're used to them.

JAKE FULKERSON: This has nothing to do with the Native Americans.

HEGYI: That's Jake Fulkerson, one of the commissioners.

FULKERSON: There was one article that we saw that said commissioners against the Indians or something. And that's garbage.

HEGYI: Fulkerson says the whole issue is overblown. But he and the other county commissioners don't make the ultimate decision. They can only make a recommendation to a federal body that will. It's called the U.S. Board On Geographic 20 Names. And Lou Yost is the guy in charge.

LOU YOST: No one thinks about geographic names until someone wants to change one of the names that they're familiar with. And then, everyone gets all emotional.

HEGYI: He says his board gets about a dozen or so controversial name changes like this every year. And when they're trying to make these kind of decisions, they'll ask for recommendations from federal agencies and state county and tribal 21 governments. The board's researchers also compile historical documents and corroborate 22 accusations 23. In Gustavus Doane's case, they found mountains of evidence against him.

Back at the park, Chief Stanley Charles Grier says erasing 24 Doane's name from Yellowstone is a long time coming.

GRIER: It's really meant to represent justice.

HEGYI: The board is still waiting on a recommendation from the National Park Service but says it could make a final decision on the Yellowstone landmarks as early as this fall.

For NPR News, I'm Nate Hegyi in Missoula, Mont.

(SOUNDBITE OF SERA CAHOONE'S “DEER CREEK 25 CANYON”)

MARTIN: This story came to us from the Mountain West News Bureau, a public radio collaborative.