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"McKinley" Since 1917, Alaska's Highest Peak Is Redesignated "Denali"
NPR reports that the Alaskan mountain which has for nearly a century been known officially as Mt. McKinley will revert to the name under which it's been known for a much longer time: Denali. President Obama is to "make a public announcement of the name change in Anchorage Monday, during a three-day visit to Alaska." Interior Secretary Sally Jewell's secretarial order of August 28th declares the name change to be immediately effective, and directs the United States Board on Geographic Names "to immediately
implement this name change, including changing the mountain's name in the Board's Geographic
Names Information System and notifying all interested parties of the name change."
According to http://www.brainyquote.com/quo... Mark Twain?
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Alaska has been trying to get this change done since 1975, but all the Congressfolks from Ohio have continually blocked it and/or introduced laws to try and make it permanent...for stupid Ohio-ego reasons?
It's also worth noting that McKinley never set foot in Alaska, never did a damn thing for them, and the mountain was named after him BEFORE he was elected. It'd be like Trump buying Pike's Peak and renaming it Trump's Peak or something.
... because it's not one of the 8 highest mountains in the world, the USGS has decided to declare it a "dwarf mountain" and says that it doesn't really count as a mountain. ;)
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
"Denali" = anagram for "Denial"
Worked on many projects code named "Denali".
Just saying...
You do realize McKinley had nothing to do with Alaska or the mountain, right? It was an arbitrary president's name for ~100 years and now its not. If you can't wrap your little head around that one you would be hopelessly confused by doublespeak.
At least we haven't completely sold out yet.
It can no longer be said that President Obama hasn't accomplished anything during his term in office.
How is it that the Interior Secretary can unilaterally declare a name change? There has been a long congressional issue over this. It was a congressional act that named it in 1917. Note that it's mostly an Ohio (President McKinley was from Niles, Ohio) delegation that's previously resisted the name change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Just another day in Paradise
Who said he was?
He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
2015 - 1977 = 38 years
The Interior Department said the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had been deferring to Congress since 1977, and cited a 1947 law that allows the Interior Department to change names unilaterally when the board fails to act "within a reasonable time." The board shares responsibility with the Interior Department for naming such landmarks.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f60262f7cb8a4363b3a38b7a035ed66b/white-house-says-mount-mckinley-be-renamed-denali
Mountains should be nameless. Then this problem goes away.
The mountain formerly known as Denali, then McKinley.
...McKinley had nothing to do with the mountain. Or even all that much with Alaska--it was not acquired by the US during his administration, became a district before he took office, and remained one for his entire term.
You mean, that it was named McKinley in the first place?
Because there was a totally arbitrary political renaming - but this one wasn't it.
Why fix small issues that take virtually no effort to fix when you can blow them off because there are much larger issues that are nearly impossible to fix.
I mean, my house has a foundation issue that will take a year or two for me to save up the money to repair, so it makes sense for me to stop taking out the trash and cleaning the cat's litter box. I have to focus on the big issue, right? The trash and cat shit can wait a couple of years.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be renamed. I'm merely noting the 'monumental' efforts needed to update all existing documentation referring to the new Mt.Denali.
What, you expect him to give them their lands back with an executive order?
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
I have no problem with it, but I hope we don't get into an endless mountain renaming debate going forward for all the other mountains.
Is there a law specifically that allows it, as is the case here? Then yes, he does.
The 25th President of the US. He was assassinated shortly after winning a second term.
But that's the thing, passing legislation that will improve the lives of Native Americans can't be done "with the stroke of a pen." The legislative process is a lot longer and more complicated than what he's doing here.
I can't remember who it was... it might have been Halldór Laxnes... who said that a piece of nature isn't really a piece of nature unless it doesn't have a name. That is, the first thing people do once they start interacting with an object or place is to give it a name, and so once something is named it starts to become about the history of people rather than the history of the land itself. And that if you want to establish a real connection with nature, you don't go sit on top of that well-known named peak that people climb... you go to that little nameless stream or that remote nameless cliff or whatnot - places which tell only their own story.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
What I don't get is why so much focus is placed on so-called "Native" Americans, the entitlement mentality surrounding them, and the preferential treatment they still get today.
It's not like their ancestors were even the first in North America. The people we call "Native Americans" today are merely descended from the people who came in the latest of many waves of migration. They displaced earlier settlers of the Americas. So they're not really any different than European or any other settlers who came later. Both these "natives" and the Europeans came from Eurasia, even!
I can see it now... George III probably sent a letter to the American colonies... "you can't revolt, we've got all of these maps, and do you have any idea how much work it would be to redo them?"
I have no problem with the mountain being called Denali. However, I'm not sure what this really accomplishes. Many mountains in the world aren't called by the name given them by the native peoples.
And if they really want to give it the name used by the original inhabitants, it needs to be called "Y'tng'ag'wlll''... ahh, dammit, can't get the typography right for creatures without facial tentacles.
You are an idiot.
The people of Alaska have been asking for this name change for decades.
In fact, hardly anyone really calls the mountain McKinley anymore, people have been calling it Denali.
It has nothing to do with Obama or his ego.
That you think it does it purely the result of you being very stupid and gullible. It's time someone delivered you this bad news.
Obama can't have anything named after him. Only fair.
So you are going to stop calling it Obamacare?
Originally known as "Your finger, you fool!"
They have a lot of functioning democratic process in 1984 then? Because that is what we are talking about here.
The people of Alaska didn't WANT it named for a guy that did jack and squat for their state, tried to have it changed, hit red tape,asked for help from the POTUS in cutting through said tape, and finally the name got changed.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Oh FFS. There are plenty of arguments to make to associate the office of the presidency with Orwell but this is one of the weakest.
Obama is not retracting all textbooks that reference the mountain and throwing anyone who ever went there in some Stalinist gulag. He's changing the name back to what it was before some random dude named it after a guy from Ohio who had never been there. If this is Orwellian, then so is any government-initiated change of any kind.
If Obama had renamed McKinley to Mt Obama, you might have a valid argument. All he did was what the state of Alaska had been asking for for nearly 40 years.
More to the point, it is what the locals wanted. Nobody in Alaska calls it Mount McKinley it has always been Denali. The Alaska state government calls it that as well and petitioned the US Govt to change the name in the federal government back in the 70s. Had it not been for some twat Congressman from Ohio this wouldn't have taken 30+ years. There is no liberal conspiracy, it just people who don't know whats going on making mountains out of mole hills.
Indeed. In mountaineering circles it's always been Denali as well. Pretty much every group that has a physical connection to the mountain has always called it Denali.
-Chris
I'm really, really trying... hold on, I think I'm starting to care... nope, lost it. Still don't care.
The cost of changing all the documents and textbooks that reference that mountain.
If the folks in Alaska want to call it chicken pot pie that is fine with me. This is useless and does nothing to make the world a better place.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Are you suggesting we should wage war on people that don't want the maps to change?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Actually it was named when the mountain was explored in 1896, when McKinley was being elected.
Really? You'll overturn the Bureau of Land Management's right to prevent them from fishing and hunting and going on ancestral lands when they want to?
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Trump announces that he will reverse the renaming if he gets elected
Hillary says it will be renamed to Mt. Edmund Hillary.
Hell, a president can change anything to anything with a stroke of a bureaucrats pen these days.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
So you are going to stop calling it Obamacare?
Why do that? People are happy to play partisan politics with stuff, in this case he made it, he owns it.
Om, nomnomnom...
Naming things after politicians is stupid. Politicians are gone and forgotten in a matter of years; things like mountains are around for hundreds of years.
If you want to name a building after a politician, knock yourself out, but I fail to see why anyone would support remembering some politician for hundreds of years.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
But Ol Olsoc, he isn't without a bit of sympathy, so let me tell ya a story that will gladden yer hearts.
Remember when that no good womanizing liberal socialist JFK passed away? He of turning the White house into Camelot?
Well those socialist liberals then went and re-named Cape Canaveral in Florida to Cape Kennedy. Can you imagine?
Fortunately smarter, stronger, and right minded folks re-named it back to Cape Canaveral to right that terrible wrong.
So hopefully that will help to gruntle your howls of umbrage, as the present occupant merely re-names it to what it was for all we know, it's first name.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Foreign countries don't even agree on what to call each other let alone specific places. I know a little "Japanese" (Nihongo) and from what I understand no one from that country would refer to it as "Japan". It is "Nippon" or "Nihon", "Japan" from what I've heard is a really bad 1,500 year old Portuguese pronunciation of a Chinese word referring to the island chain off of China's coast. I think this is far from an isolated situation, anyone know other languages similar craziness?
Having just recently read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', I can't help but see the parallel.
Which part? Someone erasing the mountains name to call it Mount McKinley?
Or changing the name back to it's original name?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's a clothing brand that took their name from the mountain...lol wonder if they will change too? :)
http://www.mckinley.eu/mckinle...
Don't argue facts with the wingnut faction infected with Obama Derangement Syndrome. They simply roll off like water off of duck's feathers. They have their own reality and won't acknowledge any other.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be renamed. I'm merely noting the 'monumental' efforts needed to update all existing documentation referring to the new Mt.Denali.
Well, they should have thought of that when they had to change all the books from Mount Denali to Mount McKinley
The cost isn't all that much anyhow. You ever see a map hanging on the wall with Ceylon or East Germany or Czechoslovakia or Yougoslavia? They become a footnote in history. current things like textbooks might get a sticky label inserted to note the name change, otherwise it's life as usual.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
At least the administration hasn't yet taken over more millions of acres and banned all access to evil, disgusting, polluting, scourge-on-the-face-of-the-earth humans.
Oh, dang...now I gave them an idea. My bad.
Yeah, I can't possibly figure out why we would want to do anything for a people that were systematically killed, evicted off their lands, repeatedly lied to by the government, repeatedly had treaties broken by the government, kept from practicing their religion, had their kids taken away, had their sacred lands taken away for mining if anything valuable was found on those lands, shoved onto reservations (which could also be taken away if anything valuable was found there), and treated as inferior in every way.
Gosh, it's almost like we realized we were giant assholes to a particular group of people for a few centuries and feel bad about it.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
This is the last thing the Federal Government needs to be involved in. The mountain is in a state, so let the state name it whatever they want. End of story. What a waste of Presidential time (not that he would be doing anything useful anyway) and front page news space.
We already moved - away from you, to the suburbs.
"...making mountains out of mole hills"
In this case, it was making a mountain into a speed bump.
Who said he was?
He's making Alaskans happy with the stroke of a pen. What's the problem with that?
His haters have spent the last 8 years going nucking futs about everything he has ever done, and a whole lot he hasn't
So even thougt he was doing by law, what he was asked to do by duly elected Alaskan politicians, the core group of haters see this as yet another abuse of his power.
So it's same old, same old. People living in the bubble.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If Obama had renamed McKinley to Mt Obama, you might have a valid argument. All he did was what the state of Alaska had been asking for for nearly 40 years.
And basically everyone else EXCEPT Ohio had been wanting. So, majority rules sucka!
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
We're living in Denali.
According to http://thedailyshow.cc.com/vid... Jordan Klepper.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The name was Denali before the White Man reassigned the name to honor a white man. It'd been unofficially Denali to locals ever since. The feds refused to let the locals name it until 1980, when the federal park was renamed to Denali National Park and Preserve. It'd been officially Denali to locals ever since. Why should the feds disregard the local names for things, and force their own names on local features?
Learn to love Alaska
Poltically correct bullshit.
States rights are good when you want to break federal law. But state rights are shit when the state wants to name something in it.
Reminds me of the Civil War, where the States Rights issue was that the south was rebelling against states rights and wanted a strong federal government. But 150 years later, it's forgotten by the losers, and they assert they were on the other sides of the states rights issue. Always changing their story, because reality is against them.
Learn to love Alaska
Or, it's you who is rewriting history. You're focusing on the fact that the South supported using federal power to back the Fugitive Slave Clause in the Constitution, and then to expand federal regulation of slavery via the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
But slavery was pretty much the only case where the South was for federal intervention. In practically every other matter, they favored local rights over federal regulation. The Civil War was about slavery, not states' rights. But because the North won, they got to abolish slavery and weaken states' rights at the same time.
As a friend often tells me, before the Civil War people would say "the United States are", and since the war they say "the United States is".
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Alaska is a huge expanse, over twice the size of Texas, constituting almost 18 percent of the land mass of the USA. Obama is the first sitting president to visit. Only like 750,000 people live there. Amazing.
At only 21000 feet, Denali doesn't even rank in Earth's highest (altitude) places. Remarkably it is in the top 3 for prominence. No longer will the mountain have to be referenced as "Denali (Mt. McKinley)" or "Mt. McKinley (Denali)". People will no longer have to explain the two names over and over and over.
If only he'd do something else reasonable like creating an executive order forcing the use of the metric system!
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Why AC? Honestly, I think Mount GrumpySteen has an awesome ring to it.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
oreign countries don't even agree on what to call each other let alone specific places. I know a little "Japanese" (Nihongo) and from what I understand no one from that country would refer to it as "Japan". It is "Nippon" or "Nihon", "Japan" from what I've heard is a really bad 1,500 year old Portuguese pronunciation of a Chinese word referring to the island chain off of China's coast. I think this is far from an isolated situation, anyone know other languages similar craziness?Correction: 500 year old (from roughly 1500s) bad Portuguese pronunciation, Monday morning and my brain isn't completely up and running.
You can start with 'Indians'. 'Ol Columbus was a tad confused at times.
Must of been the wine.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I can't remember who it was... it might have been Halldór Laxnes... who said that a piece of nature isn't really a piece of nature unless it doesn't have a name. That is, the first thing people do once they start interacting with an object or place is to give it a name, and so once something is named it starts to become about the history of people rather than the history of the land itself. And that if you want to establish a real connection with nature, you don't go sit on top of that well-known named peak that people climb... you go to that little nameless stream or that remote nameless cliff or whatnot - places which tell only their own story.
Nature is everywhere, everything; named or not, altered by man or now.
Indeed, nature is all of reality.
These are actually more substantial than renaming the mountain. I'd like to see more things done like this. Again, the window to go through Congress closed quite awhile ago, but I'd still like to see more steps like this to help the Alaskan native people return to their way of life as much as possible.
Ummm, mining and large scale logging are hardly a 'return to their native way of life'. It is simply a sop to the Alaskan Native voting block - which tends to be Democratic in a rabidly Republican state.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It *is* a planet. It's just a dwarf planet.
Of course, the correct terminology is now "Little Planets".
Foreign countries don't even agree on what to call each other let alone specific places. I know a little "Japanese" (Nihongo) and from what I understand no one from that country would refer to it as "Japan". It is "Nippon" or "Nihon", "Japan" from what I've heard is a really bad 1,500 year old Portuguese pronunciation of a Chinese word referring to the island chain off of China's coast. I think this is far from an isolated situation, anyone know other languages similar craziness?
Germany vs Deutschland vs Tyskland... All the same place but named after different tribes living there 2000 years ago plus some language drift.
Also pretty much all major cities in Europe that doesn't have super easy names have different names in every single neighbouring language.
We dealt with that by leaving all the names alone. It is amusing living in close vicinity to Prince William and Prince George's counties within 20 miles of the capital of the United States.
When I lived in Alaska, I never heard anyone call it anything else. Denali is its name (no Mt. in front of it). Only imbeciles from the Lower 48 think it should be referred to any other way. Living up there gives you a different view of the country, that's for sure. Seattle is the capitol of the world, Texas exists to be used as the butt of size jokes, and inhabitants of the Lower 48 are wimpy and clueless.
You can start with 'Indians'. 'Ol Columbus was a tad confused at times.
Columbus was right but for the wrong reason. Before European contact, the Apache were calling themselves Inde, meaning "the people". Words for "people" resembling Inde or Dene are common in the Athabaskan languages that were spoken in what are now the southwestern United States, Alaska, and the Northwest Territories of Canada.
So they're not really any different than European or any other settlers who came later.
Except they didn't have new technology or new diseases, nor did they emigrate in masses faster than ever before.
Yup, some people slowly walking into another area over a land bridge was exactly the same as European settlement into North America.
Obama can't have anything named after him. Only fair.
So you are going to stop calling it Obamacare?
Why? Obama calls it that.
Just another day in Paradise
So you *agree* that it should be named Denali, like it was already named when the 'explorer' decided to rename it. He wasn't the first person to explore the mountain. Nor was he the first person to write the name for it on paper. He was just the first person to submit a form to the federal government requesting that the mountain be *renamed*.
Originally it was named appropriately Mukuntuweap National Monument by president Taft. The National Park Service changed it to the Morman-given name Zion to appeal to a white ethnocentric population. Past time to fix that.
Well the good news is all the history textbooks will have to probably be reprinted anyway due to something called THE ALWAYS MOVING FORWARD PROPERTIES OF GOD DAMN LINEAR TIME
Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You *do* realize that this was done in accordance with existing law, right? This is yet another example of people getting upset at Obama, and claiming overreach, because he is *obeying* the law.
Have gnu, will travel.
Because there has been at least one senator from Ohio that is a prick and deliberately obstructed the renaming.
err. It isn't "Mt. Denali", it's just "Denali." If it's any help, nothing will need to be changed locally. I've not heard any but tourists, or the odd cheechako refer to it as Mt. McKinley.
The name was Denali before the White Man reassigned the name to honor a white man. It'd been unofficially Denali to locals ever since. The feds refused to let the locals name it until 1980, when the federal park was renamed to Denali National Park and Preserve. It'd been officially Denali to locals ever since. Why should the feds disregard the local names for things, and force their own names on local features?
Do you mean like Pike's Peak, Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, the Columbia River, and hundreds of other geo-graphical or -logical features that were named by white men who didn't care what the dark-skinned natives called them?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Gosh, it's almost like we realized we were giant assholes to a particular group of people for a few centuries and feel bad about it.
Wait a second there. I was born a few decades ago, so could not have been an asshole to anyone for centuries. Second, every group has been shit on by someone else over the course of the centuries you are crying about. The Mongols invaded Europe from Asia, many white people died. The Vikings invaded from north Europe to the rest of the continent, even sacking Rome, and many white people died. Europeans invaded Africa and the Americas, many dark skinned people died. Now the descendants of the Spanish invaders are complaining that they aren't being allowed to invade more areas they feel entitled to. In Africa, just a decade ago, one tribe killed a million people from a rival tribe.
So when you make it sound like only one group in all of history has ever been an asshole, and one or another group of people has always the victims, your argument falls flat. As the AC said, it's happened between groups for all of history, and everyone can find a centuries old grievance if they want.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So you agree that it is the same in principle, but different in speed.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
This is a reasonable response to my first gut instinct of, "WTF?", and it sounds like something that in a year this mountain of a "controversy" will be a mole hill. And it doesn't sound anything like the "liberal bias" behind then Arizona governor Janel Napalitano's push to rename "Squaw Peak" (the name every local knew it as) in the Phoenix metro area to "Piestewa Peak" (which few people were happy with).
I have to say, though, that it would've been a little easier to deal with if "Mt. McKinley" was the answer to a fairly common trivia question. And it seems like there are more important things for the federal government to be dealing with than fixing mountain names.
I will always remember Bush II for his final act: getting the fsck out of office without invading Iran. Unfortunately, nearly all of the GOP presidential candidates seem hell bent on rolling back his "legacy".
Yes, let's drop a nuke on Iran to prove our resolve. I'm sure that'll certainly convince them to abort their nuclear arms program.
Do you refer to every creek and rock around your town by the names that Native Americans would have used hundreds of years ago?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Even history textbooks are updated and replaced at regular intervals. More facts are discovered and the textbooks wear out from use. Nothing is forcing anybody into quickly replacing textbooks. It will work itself out.
Teachers can also point out the new name of the mountain. I think they can handle it.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
And more people blame Bush for the delayed response rather than the Democrats in charge of the city and the state who needed to request federal assistance. I know, it's tough being a whiny child when there are rules to follow, but you still have to follow the rules, or face the consequences.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.
Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?
every time i see someone whine about "political correctness", i notice what they're really asking for is continuing permission to be a jerk to others.
Denali was originally known by that name not only by native peoples in the area, but also locally by the state of Alaska.
so not only are you really asking, "hey, why can't i continue being disrespectful to native Alaskans?", you also hate states' rights. good work there.
I grew up in AK and for the longest time didn't make the connection that Mt. McKinley was Denali. I mean the surrounding area is Denali National Park. Everyone calls in Denali. Every time we flew into Anchorage, the pilot would invariably say, 'if you look out your [right/left] window you will see Mt. McKinley', and I was always like 'WTF, the only mountain above the cloud line is Denali. Where is this Mt. McKinley and why don't they ever point out Denali, it's way bigger'. OK, finally when I was a teen I put it all together. You know what's weird about AK, too? I learned way more Canadian geography than US geography in elementary school. Seriously I knew every province and every capital and lots of Canadian history before I knew all of the names of the lower 48. I always wondered if Alaskans secretly wanted to be Canadian. Maybe Mt. McKinley was the reason way. :)
I'm an expatriate now, but man do I miss AK. Cheers on Denali, though.
But because the North won, they got to abolish slavery and weaken states' rights at the same time.
Funny how they only abolished slavery in those pesky southern states. Maryland was allowed to keep their slaves for a year after the emancipation proclamation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Wait a second there. I was born a few decades ago, so could not have been an asshole to anyone for centuries. Second, every group has been shit on by someone else over the course of the centuries you are crying about. The Mongols invaded Europe from Asia, many white people died. The Vikings invaded from north Europe to the rest of the continent, even sacking Rome, and many white people died. Europeans invaded Africa and the Americas, many dark skinned people died. Now the descendants of the Spanish invaders are complaining that they aren't being allowed to invade more areas they feel entitled to. In Africa, just a decade ago, one tribe killed a million people from a rival tribe.
So when you make it sound like only one group in all of history has ever been an asshole, and one or another group of people has always the victims, your argument falls flat. As the AC said, it's happened between groups for all of history, and everyone can find a centuries old grievance if they want.
it's almost like we should recognize a history of people being dicks to others and try to do better, not try to outdo dickery.
Locals call it Denali, it's always been Denali to anyone who knows a damn thing about the area and its history. I've spend my fair share of time up there, and people I know roll their eyes at 'McKinley'.
Renaming it from Denali to McKinley was just political ego boosting, McKinley himself had nothing to do with Alaska, or Denali -- never climbed it, never did anything for it, or the park. And the park it's located in is DENALI National Park & Preserve.
This isn't about being PC or anything like that (there a set of people who will hate Obama for anything, if he cured cancer they'd blame him for putting oncologists out of work...), it's about restoring the correct name it's had for much longer.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
There is a campaign to rename Mt Evans and Mt Kit Carson in Colroado because the namesakes fought in anti-Indian wars. I dont think its worth the effort.
Except that it was Denali long before it was Mt McKinley. It simply had 2 names during the time McKinley got slapped on it.
McKinley never visited the mountain, so his name being attached to it was pomp theater to begin with. What's ridiculous is how long the indigenous people who named it in the first place had to fight to get his name removed.
I refuse to sign
Re-writing history? Like changing the name from Denali to Mt. McKinley in the first place?
Yes, I agree that we should recognize the history of people being dicks. However, all that some groups want to remember today is white people being dicks, and black people solely being the victims.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Gee almost sounds as effective as the English (India, Hong Kong). Oh right, Americans are English.
Anne of Arundel, Mary's land, lots of names in this fine state make me chuckle.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Actually it was named when the mountain was explored in 1896, when McKinley was being elected.
I'd imagine it was named before that, by the people who actually lived there.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Hopefully not, as it is Denali, not Mount Denali, and having to correct it twice would be double the amount of money!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Also pretty much all major cities in Europe that doesn't have super easy names have different names in every single neighbouring language.
Even the ones with easy names. I mean, how hard is "Wien" really? Or "Milano", how lazy do we have to be to knock off an "o"??
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Yes, I agree that we should recognize the history of people being dicks. However, all that some groups want to remember today is white people being dicks, and black people solely being the victims.
the quickest way i can explain what you're missing is in a comic: http://i.imgur.com/1S139Cq.jpg
the longer explanation? the U.S. owes a lot of its current position as the leading economy on the backs of black slaves. yes, there were white indentured servants, too. the vast majority of enslaved people were black folks. and we're talking about generations of black people made to work under a white majority.
explain to me what happens when you continually subjugate one people over centuries and many generations? to the point where that people have lost almost all of their economic, social, and political power? just "freeing" that people does not even begin to repair the damage. just saying "hey, you're free and equal now!" doesn't magically wave away centuries of destruction.
and in fact we know that the whole equality bit has not even come true. from Jim Crow to the striking down of significant bits of the Voting Rights Act, to the almost daily extrajudicial police executions of unarmed people of color, racism hasn't actually gone away. and white persons still benefit from it
here's the part where you protest that "hey but I'M not racist!" on a conscious level, sure. great. but you still benefit from that racism. i'm making the assumption that you're white simply because if you were black, you would know. your perception would be different. you would not be inherently afraid of police. you would not mistrust schools or "traditional" forms of career advancement. you would not have to exclude certain neighborhoods when considering a home for fear of being unwelcome. there's an entire world of which you're unaware.
so instead of complaining that you're not part of the problem, listen instead and come to realize it's not about you. it's about a society that has an addiction of breeding success by treading on an underclass.
Are you including Top Thrill Dragster on Cedar Point in north central Ohio?
You are talking about one country in the world, and part of its history that ended within a century of its independence. I'm talking about humans through history, and not just 'indentured servants'.
I was going to give an example in my previous post, but thought it would dilute the point too much. I guess I should have kept it in the final draft.
Do you know why American tap dancing and Irish dancing are so similar to each other? Despite one having a historic association with blacks, and the other comes from a group as white as white can be, the two dance styles have almost the same mechanics. This is because they were developed to their modern forms on the British plantations in the Carribean. Why would Irish dancing be developed on a tropical island? Because the British enslaved the Irish, and sent these slaves to work on the sugar plantations alongside the black slaves. The two groups of slaves realized that their dances they did after supper were similar, and developed them together. As the slaves, black and white, were eventually freed, the dancing styles were carried to the American mainland. For every famous black tap dancer in the US, there was a white slave who was his ancestor's dance partner.
Add to this the fact that Europeans enslaved whites whenever one side won a war, or some petty 'kingdom' of two villages and a pig sty overran the village and pig sty next door. The Chinese rulers enslaved the Chinese commoners. The muslims of the Middle East and North Africa enslaved many black Africans to sell at the Mediterranean seaports to any ship that needed bodies, or that wanted more goods to sell at the European seaports. And all those Africans brought over to America from Africa were enslaved by black Africans first, then sold to white Europeans at the slave markets along the coast.
So whatever point you think you are making has squat all to do with relevant history, if you are trying to limit the discussion simply to whites owning black slaves.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
You fail to consider that there is a vast distance between racism and slavery. If I nod my head at a random white person but don't do the same to a random black person, I'm being racist. If I whip a person for not performing the hard labor that I have required of him without compensation, that is slavery.
Don't you think there is at least the possibility that some of those 300,000 white men died because they didn't believe that slavery was good, but also didn't necessarily find much common ground with black people in general?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Dad, I thought you couldn't read slashdot at work anymore. Ever since they caught you jerking off to Natalie Portman posts.
By the way, mom says get the butt plug out of your ass before coming home. Her bull has a treat for you.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Deutschland/Allemagne/Germany and god only knows what other people call it in other languages.
It's crazy, almost like people can refer to the same geographical feature with totally different names...
Don't forget their next door neighbors who call it Allemagne.
People support state's rights when it's to their benefit, and support Federal primacy when that's to their benefit. It's as simple as that. Notice how some Republicans are wringing their hands over legal weed issues?
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Basically, this whole "state rights" rationalization for the break-up of the Civil War is pure poppycock.
Well, the particular "state's right" in question was slavery. That southern schools try to teach the Civil War in dog whistle, at least, shows they're embarrassed about it. It's like saying the Confederate Battle Flag is about "heritage" and "pride". You just have to understand that the heritage in question is that of Jim Crow and slavery, and the pride in question is white pride.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Well, for one thing, Mount McKinley was just named that by some asshole during William McKinley's Presidential campaign, and somehow it took. It was still 'Denali' right up until Woodrow Wilson established McKinley National Park when the name was made official. There's no historical reason for naming that particular mountain after William McKinley, who's sole contribution to Alaskan history basically involves not offering to sell it back to Russia (who, while owning Alaska, named the mountain "Bolshaya Gora" which means "Big Mountain").
Of all the things to get upset about, this just isn't one of them.
Signed,
Someone sitting in Ohio right now, where we're supposed to be all fired up and angry about a mountain that bore the name of an Ohioan President being renamed by Presidential fiat.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Sadly enough I don't think being black, or part of any minority, automatically confers that knowledge and or point of view. I work with a relatively speaking, very ethnically diverse set of professionals. Among many of my coworkers, because the system has worked for them, they feel like the American Dream is alive and well, and the people living in the ghetto's just scraping by are there because they deserve it. It's a psychological thing, people don't like to ascribe to luck what they can claim as personal effort.
People will go to some incredible lengths to devalue luck when it comes to success and failure. Pretty much every organized religion is setup to directly feed off that urge. That's right, it wasn't luck that you picked the winning lottery number, it was gods will because you've just been so righteous and patient all these years.
Congress did not fail to act; it failed to act in accordance to the desires of those who wanted the change.
There is a huge difference.
Many things so names were not named with names of meaning. Also, the forced naming of the already-named mountain didn't stick because there were still enough natives in the area to use the old name. In most cases, the feds take the state's name for something and run with it. They didn't in this case because Alaska wasn't a state for a while after the naming. Also note, the "inconsequential" names aren't being fought over. Note the Pribilofs are not using their native names, nor does anyone care. They are named for the Russian "explorer" who found the inhabited (and named) islands. There are many more such examples.
Is the real issue that if you let "those people" win, then you have to admit an error? And The Great White Race is never wrong?
Why must you use such force to hold back the natives? Why does it harm you so that the name of a mountain has changed on the federal records to match what the locals have been calling it since before the records were kept?
Learn to love Alaska
Luckily, there weren't any at the time. So nothing had to be changed. When you are first exploring an area, the first person to name something on paper wins and that is the name that it should always have.
And that name is Denali.
As I noted in another post, I don't get to rename people when I meet them for the first time (Although GW Bush was known for that, and I guess some of the new names were hilarious) That dude that named it Mt McKinley was way late to the table.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The people complaining about the cost of changing maps are not actually worried about the cost of changing maps.
Correct, they are still mad the present occupant is not of the right pigmentation to suit them - all the outrage occam's to that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Hello,
As a resident of Ohio, I can formally tell you that we don't give a shit either. William McKinley doesn't even have crap named after him here like other Ohioan presidents do (Taft, Grant, Harrison [both W. H. Harrison and Benjamin], Hamilton, Garfield, etc.). In fact, if there's anything that was named for Rutherford B. Hayes, you can rename that shit back to whatever it was before, too.
This is an issue of importance only to douchebag politicians, and people that actually live in Alaska.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
As a friend often tells me, before the Civil War people would say "the United States are", and since the war they say "the United States is".
I suspect that's because of the Union/Northern Propaganda. Part of any war is figuring out the narrative to use to sell the war to your people, both the people fighting and the people undergoing hardship at home. While that's always been true on some level, it's been particularly important since the use of the longbow in 1415 at the battle of Agincourt. (Because at that point wealth and a small number of people was no longer sufficient to win a war--mass infantry and therefore control of public sentiment became necessary to field an army.)
We have been swinging the other way for some time now, because of automation, and democracy will become much less useful to the preservation of the state over time. I'll be surprised if it survives the next Millennium. We've been raised to like it, and it has a lot going for it, but it's too inefficient in its current form probably anywhere in the world.
In any event, today's common claim is that the Civil War was a fight "to preserve the Union," and while I don't see a contemporary reference to that propaganda in a quick google search, if that was part of the narrative then the shift to "The United States Is" was inevitable, and probably started as part of that campaign.
This is merely economic stimulus for the depressed cartography sector.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Well, as maps and textbooks are reprinted every year anyway, the cost will be "nothing".
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's not like a renaming of a street where people need to print new business cards and shit, it's a giant fucking lump of rock that all the locals have been calling "Denali" for 30+ years anyway. Who gives a shit.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Hey! At least give him credit for not selling Alaska back to Russia before getting assassinated!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It *is* a planet. It's just a dwarf planet.
Of course, the correct terminology is now "Little Planets".
I believe they prefer "Planets of Compact Stature."
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
... GM is re-branding its SUV as "The Chevy McKinley".
The mountain got the name Mckinley out of PC at the time. This is just a reversal of the out-of-place PC.
"Let thing be and build from there, eh?" - It is now back to what it was before PC'ness renamed it.
Like Cape Canaveral?
Many abolitionists were racist. Slavery was considered evil by most of the western world at that time period, but racism was more or less expected due to beliefs of white supremacy.
That's not to say that you aren't at least in part correct. I'm confident the majority of Union combatants weren't really fighting to end slavery. Most likely they were simply marching to their nation's drum, which was currently fighting to preserve the Union after the South opened fire on a Federal fort, but there was a very solid belief that slavery was in fact an intolerable evil in the north.
In other words, they wanted strong federal government for the issues where it was convenient to them, and strong state government otherwise. Which is exactly how the North was, too, it's just that the issues were different. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that CSA wouldn't have ended with more federal power were it to remain independent, for the same exact reason as USA did.
Errr, don't you think that non-linear non-always moving forward time would require history textbooks reprinting to be even more frequent?
No sig today.
When the residents have appealed to the Congress to carve a chunk out of the Oregon Territory and make it separate, they have initially proposed naming it Columbia Territory. It was changed to Washington during the discussions in the Congress, because someone suggested that it would be confusing because of District of Columbia...
OTOH, when Washington became a state, there was a plebiscite for its constitution, which spelled out the name. So one could argue that it was, in fact, approved by the populace in the end. There's certainly no significant movement contesting the naming at this point, unlike with Denali.
It was coming from Alaska for the past, what, 40 years? Except that they couldn't get it done because it had to be done on federal level (they have already renamed it on state level), and they were successfully blocked from doing so by Ohio. Obama used his executive power - quite legitimate, in this particular case - to overcome the block.
You wouldn't technically ever need to reprint history textbooks. You could just go back and change what was actually written in them to begin with.
From now on, I'm going to name every inconsequential stream and cliff my eyes lay upon during any of my hikes, just for the sake of trolling.~
States rights are good when you want to break federal law. But state rights are shit when the state wants to name something in it.
Sounds like business as usual. I live in TX where the idea of "local control" is translated as "local control as long as you conform to the political ideology of the state government" The state government that caps all forms of local taxes (from sales tax, to property taxes). The same state that mandates everything from the education curriculum to limits on what counties/cities can do with zoning regulations, to whether a city can ban plastic bags (ok the latter didn't pass... yet).
The "conservatives" in TX usually manage to pass a couple hundred new laws restricting things that were previously free or the ordnance of local government every time they go to Austin.
> "McKinley" Since 1917, Alaska's Highest Peak Is Redesignated "Denali"
Obama can call it anything he jolly well likes, but that peak was named by an act of Congress in 1917 and it will require an act of Congress to undo that. No "executive order" or other such malarky has the slightest effect. Obama can no more rename Mt. McKinley than he can Cmdr Taco.
Did it act in a way that said "no we will keep the name", or did they act in a way where they kept putting it off for decades? Oh, but because it's Obama it must be some sort of nefarious plan on his part!
Renaming it back to the original name though. Not like it's political correctness gone amuck or it'd be named after someone liberal who never visited Alaska.
Besides, no one has called it Mount McKinley in decades. Even the big ass truck driven by white cowboy wannabes is called a Denali. I was honestly surprised that it was still officially called McKinley when everyone in Alaska says Denali.
But that was before Republicans turned into a hard right conservative. Although McKinley was known for being pro-business and pro-interventionism.
Wait, they had a statue of Jefferson Davis in Texas? That state that rebelled twice? Can't we give them back to Mexico if we apologize?
Because no one has called it Mt McKinley in decades. Everyone in Alaska calls it Denali.
Even after the war, the federal government gave up on trying to make the south grant political rights to freed slaves. For a few years during construction the freed slaves got the right to vote but then they were systematically denied it for nearly a hundred years. Official slavery was replaced by official segregation.
At one point I would have thought the "war of northern aggression" myth would die out over time. But it seems they are still preaching this to the confederate offspring.
During the Civil War centennial, the war was presented as something in the past with no modern resonance, and war veterans from both sides were honored. The issues of slavery were whitewashed, both sides treated as being equal. We still have re-enactments today that don't attempt any distinction about who was right and who was wrong. There was an article from the Negro Digest at the time of the centennial entitled "Did The South Win The Civil War?", because so little had actually changed in the South and so little mention of the causes of the war were discussed.
In that sense "heritage" meant "my grandfather fought for our country" even though that country meant the losing side of a treasonous split. Do people today in Germany honor their father's Nazi heritage? No. And neither should we celebrate Confederate heritage.
And if President Reagan had renamed it, it would have been hailed as yet another conservative triumph in solidarity with Alaska.
Majority rules is generally the rule, unless Obama is involved in which case the rule is that he has to be called a tyrant.
I don't see the parallel at all. Nobody calls it Mt McKinley. Only someone raised on doublespeak still calls it Mt McKinley. All the locals in Alaska, whether white, black, or native, call it Denali.
It's ok. Google Maps calls it Denali. Paper maps only get updated over time, it's not like the minstry of truth goes around and collects the old maps. Place names change every day and map makers know how to deal with it.
An act of congress is not needed to name things. There are far too many things named on federal lands to waste the time of congress on this. However congress decided in its wisdom to not act on this naming for several decades, despite the state of Alaska requesting the name change. There was no one opposed to this name change except a congress member from Ohio (and in general the citizens of Ohio don't care about the matter anyway, with a few of them heard to mutter "who's this McKinley guy?").
This is not a matter of Obama acting unilaterally against the will of congress, but instead taking action where congress has dragged its feet for decades, which is allowed by law. If Bush Jr had done this instead people would have been celebrating.
It's federal land and so Alaska as a state can not rename it, even though everyone locally in Alaska calls it Denali. Congress was asked to rename it and congress never managed to get it done (neither to rename it nor to affirm the existing name).
Three dollars. I'll cover it for you.
Denali sounds like a big rough and rugged truck. McKinley sounds like some sort of minivan.
It doesn't matter to me what the mountain is called. I'll never see it, since I hope to never see snow again in my life. :^)
I just thought that your argument was weak in the regard I mentioned. Please don't take it too personally, as most of the arguments in this discussion are weak in similar fashion.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So what you are saying is that only blacks are niggers.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
So now we know you support renaming features that the natives already named, and you are just arguing about where to draw the line.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
It's Nemacka in Serbian (and similar in all the Slavic languages, AFAIK).
Germans themselves being 'nemci' - in English this is something like the "Mutes" from "Muteland", since they couldn't speak slavic. Which I've always found rather funny...
Sent from my PDP-11
And what I am saying is that it is a derogatory term that is aimed at people of any color that act in a certain way.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Actually they didn't do exactly that, as the borders of Russia aren't identical with the borders of the U.S.S.R. For example Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, etc. were all part of the U.S.S.R. but not part of Russia. They did temporarily call all former Soviet states the "Commonwealth of Independent States" (C.I.S.) but that only lasted a couple years before they printed new maps with everything wholly changed.
Also known as the "Bobby did it too!" defense.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Either way is taking action. Subcommittees and leadership considered and took the action of rejecting the proposal.
Also known as the "Bobby did it too!" defense.
Cousin to the "but at least it's not as bad as North Korea/Nazi Germany" argument.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.
Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?
C8, you reveal nothing but your ignorance and intolerance with posts like this. Alaskans wanted the name to be Denali; Obama just made it official. What, you don't think a state run by Republicans should be allowed to determine what happens on lands within its borders? Guess that means you're against states rights. Interesting. Usually jerks like you are all for them and against anything non-WASP and anti-rich-guy.
Okay, now the peak is Denali. Let's name the park for McKinley.
So..here we go with Obama and the PC folks, basically needing to re-write history again. No more old symbols, if it is something a white guy did, gotta take that down, etc.
Geez...why are we needing to tear down everything old or rename it in the name of political correctness or whatever. Let things be and build from there, eh?
every time i see someone whine about "political correctness", i notice what they're really asking for is continuing permission to be a jerk to others.
Denali was originally known by that name not only by native peoples in the area, but also locally by the state of Alaska.
so not only are you really asking, "hey, why can't i continue being disrespectful to native Alaskans?", you also hate states' rights. good work there.
This.
I'm sure when the native Alaskans claimed changing the name of Denali was political correctness, they got a rifle but to the face.
I firmly believe that anyone who whinges about "PC" needs the same. After all, that is the world they're so desperate to bring back.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I wish you were logged in so I could keep track of the truly ignorant people on this site.
fightingfilipino limited his argument to the US, I responded that my argument encompasses slavery in it entirety. Maybe you should get your eyes checked, because that part was pretty clear.
As for (racists) (oh no, someone on slashdot called me a name, boo hoo) you are ignorant once again. Before I got married, I dated women that were white, black, hispanic, asian, or native american. My wife is not the same race I am. The group of friends I hang out with also runs the gamut of ethnicities.
So, yo are 0 for 2 in your attempts to teach me a lesson. Now hurry up and finish breakfast, the bus will be here soon to take you to school. And when you get to school, remember, the sign on the door says "PULL".
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
No. It is no defense at all.It's more like "The horrible situation you are trying to blame on only one group, is something that every group has done, including the group you want to be seen as 'the victim'. So any argument you make for modern compensation for past injustices better at least acknowledge reality, or your hypocrisy will make it moot."
As to your attempt at figuring out my intent, it is far from crying "Bobby did it too." I am fine with the US ceding entire states to the native tribes who lived in certain areas. Unhitch Washington and Oregon and cede them to the tribes who once lived there. Same for the Carolinas, Arizona, Minnesota, and a few others. Cut the ends off of California and Florida, and give Mt Shasta and the Everglades back. This wouldn't bother me in the least, as compensation for past injustices. But I'm not going to make it seem like that is simply another example of how evil white people are, and every other race is their innocent victims.
So, in closing, you should maybe figure out what someone is actually saying before jumping to conclusions.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.