A state board has renamed five geographic features that included slurs about Native American women.
The features getting a new moniker are a Puget Sound passage in Jefferson County, a ditch in Thurston County, a ridge in Okanogan County and lakes in Kittitas and Chelan counties. Three of the five proposals for the name changes were submitted by local tribes.
The U.S. Department of the Interior established a process to review and replace geographic sites with derogatory names in 2021.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland — the first Native American Cabinet member — created a task force to find replacement names for federal sites bearing the derogatory term for Indigenous women. More than 650 sites in the nation used the term at the time, and 18 of those were in Washington state.
The five new geographic names were unanimously approved by the board Tuesday and are the last of a group of 18 up for change. The approved names will be added to the Washington Administrative Code and passed to United States Board on Geographic Names for federal review.
The 5-acre lake west of Lake Wenatchee in Chelan County is now named Masawii Lake. The name was proposed by a Wenatchi elder.
In Jefferson County, the passage between Marrowstone Island and Indian Island is now named Passage Through. This is a traditional place name for the waterway and the translation of the Clallam word “Scɬəqʷ.” The passage was reopened in 2019, after being blocked for about 100 years.
The 9-acre lake north of Cle Elum is now named Nosh Nosh Wahtum. The name translates to “Salamander Lake” and was proposed by the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.
The ridge above Swaram Creek in Okanogan County is now named Swaram Creek Ridge. The creek itself previously bore the same derogatory name but was changed in 2018. The Swaram name came from a Methow tribal elder. The state will also submit the name Mokheil, a traditional name for the ridge proposed by the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, to the federal names database as an alternate name.
A ditch in Thurston County south of Tumwater is now named Hopkins Ditch. It has unofficially been called Hopkins Ditch since 1902.
