WYOMING — On Tuesday, June 20, Albany County commissioners recommended Swastika Lake be renamed Knight Lake by a 2 – 1 vote, but in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) the name Hayden Valley remains despite a demand from several indigenous Nations to change it.
The word swastika originally comes from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning “good fortune” or “well-being.” The symbol has been used in Native American symbolism, although in 1940 the Hopituh Shi-nu-mu (Hopi), Dine’ (Navajo), nde (Apache) and Tohono O’odham (formerly Papago) tribes renounced and banned the use of the swastika on their artwork in light of its modern connotations with fascism and genocide.
The proposed name Knight Lake is in honor of Samuel Howell Knight, a geologist who taught at the University of Wyoming and served as the Wyoming state geologist from 1933 to 1941. The lake is located in a remote part of the Medicine Bow National Forest.
This recommended renaming is part of a larger trend in recent years where U.S. place name that contain offensive slurs to minorities or honor someone with a history of racism are changed. In June 2022, YNP renamed Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain.
However, since 2015 Tribal nations in Wyoming and Montana have asked YNP to change the place name Hayden Valley.
According to a study published in People and Nature that showed 16 National Parks included 21 places named for proponents of racism, Hayden Valley was named for Ferdinand Hayden, a geologist who led the first federally funded geological survey of Yellowstone in 1871. Hayden called for the forced assimilation or, failing that, extermination of Native Americans in the area in his report to Congress. While there is a question around whether he or a colleague wrote those specific words, Hayden still would have approved that part of the report and also wrote explicitly of the supremacy of the white race.
“How do you reconcile having the main thoroughfare of America’s best idea named to honor an individual who proposed the extermination — the genocide — of the land’s original inhabitants?”
Isanti and Ihanktowan (Crow Creek Sioux)
According to the study, the Isanti and Ihanktowan wrote to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the body charged with assigning or changing U.S. names, about Hayden Valley that “if, as Wallace Stegner suggested, the world’s first national park was America’s ‘best idea,’ how do you reconcile having the main thoroughfare of America’s best idea named to honor an individual who proposed the extermination — the genocide — of the land’s original inhabitants?”
The tribes associated with Yellowstone formally requested the Yellowstone Superintendent support changing the name of Hayden Valley to Buffalo Nations Valley, Wyofile previously reported.
When asked whether or not the Park would still be considering renaming Hayden Valley, YNP’s Public Affairs Office told Buckrail, “Yellowstone may consider other sites in the future but are currently engaged with a very busy operational summer and flood recovery.”
