FRESNO, Calif. — Like many Native Americans, Jesse Bustamante has a strong connection to his family’s ancestral lands. His immediate and extended family live on an allotment – tribal lands divided into plots by the U.S. government – as members of the Dunlap Band of Mono Indians in eastern Fresno County.
His family buries their dead on their Dunlap allotment, too, and in a family cemetery on private land just down the road in Squaw Valley, digging the graves themselves with shovels. Bustamante helped bury 10 relatives over the past five years this way. One was an uncle who got Valley fever from the digging.
Returning their bodies to the Earth here is important, Bustamante said, “what we refer to when we say we’re going home, back to the land.”
But part of the homeland that’s so central to his tribe’s identity was named something he doesn’t like — Squaw Valley — by the people who displaced his ancestors. Squaw is now widely considered a slur, an offensive term that’s been used to demean indigenous women.
In his 36 years, Bustamante has had to drive by the Squaw Valley sign countless times going to and from their rural home near Kings and Sequoia National Parks. It always bothers him.
“We have to drive through Indian whore valley huh?” Bustamante said of what he thinks about when he sees the town sign. “Don’t call our women that. ... Our Indian women are beautiful and strong and smart and powerful.”
He’s among hundreds supporting a campaign led by Roman Rain Tree to rename Squaw Valley. Leaders of the Dunlap band said Rain Tree is part of their tribe and a member of a well-known Native family there.
Rain Tree’s campaign to rename Squaw Valley started last year but got more attention last month, when a resolution “supporting legislation authorizing the renaming of ‘Squaw Valley’ to ‘Nïm Valley’” appeared on a city council agenda of a nearby city. Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig brought it up on Facebook, which was met with a firestorm of comments for and against the proposal.
Nïm means “the people” in the Mono language. Bustamante said it hurt to see people making fun of the Mono word on Facebook. He said it feels like Native people are being drug through the mud all over again and “we never left the mud.”
“It’s time for a change. We may never hold that pen to change the narrative,” he said of indigenous people, “but if we get to hold it for a few minutes, let us write something.”
Rain Tree has been gathering support for his campaign to rename Squaw Valley with a change.org petition that’s received around 1,300 signatures since he made it five months ago.
He said squaw is a racially derogatory term used to describe an indigenous woman’s genitalia.
“The word ‘squaw’ perpetuates a sexualized, exploitative, and humiliating narrative that continues to focus the desires and disgust of early Euro-Americans on the bodies of Native American women,” he wrote in the change.org petition.
It’s addressed to Magsig, state Sen. Andreas Borgeas, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, Rep. Tom McClintock, the Dunlap Band of Mono Indians, Traditional Choinumni Tribe, Wukchumni Tribal Council, Northern Band of Mono Yokuts, and the Squaw Valley Tribe.
Rain Tree didn’t say whether he’d received statements from those elected officials or groups, aside from Magsig, but said he’s received community and political support from across the country, and was in the process of working with the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Board on Geographic Names to change the name. A senior researcher with that board told The Fresno Bee recently that the board had not received a formal request to change the name, however, and spokespeople with neighboring Sequoia and Sierra national forests said they had not been contacted about the proposal.
Rain Tree said he started his campaign in the summer of 2020 with the support of his nonprofit, Seeds of Sovereignty, that seeks to preserve and increase tribal sovereignty.
“In a time when the number of MMIW, Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, is reaching an all-time high,” Rain Tree said, “most commonly due to sexual assault, we simply cannot continue to allow a slur like squaw to continue to exist just because the descendants of colonial oppressors are sentimental about the conquests of their ancestors.”
Rain Tree said women in his family who grew up in Squaw Valley were harassed.
“European American men on horseback would chase my grandmother and her friends, calling them the s-word,” he said. “Their intentions of what they would do had they captured my grandmother and her sisters was clear. They were regularly sexually harassed and terrorized while being called the s-word to the point that they had a pre-established route to a safe meeting point for when they were being chased.
“The only difference between her experiences and the experiences of present-day indigenous women in S Valley is that the men drive pickup trucks.”
Rain Tree often says and writes the “s-word” instead of “squaw” because it’s so offensive to him and others.
Magsig brought the issue up on Facebook Jan. 27, stating in a video he learned a resolution about the Squaw Valley name would be discussed that night during an Orange Cove City Council meeting, proposing Squaw be changed to Nïm.
“What all this means, I have no idea,” Magsig said then before acknowledging “squaw” is offensive to some Native groups and asking residents for input. He ended by saying, “as far as I’m concerned, it will remain Squaw Valley until the community decides that it should be changed.”
Within a week, Magsig’s video had more than 300 comments and been watched 11,000 times.
Magsig said Orange Cove “tabled” the item and that it was “postponed for further discussion.” Magsig asked Orange Cove to notify his office if the resolution is later brought back before the city.
Orange Cove Mayor Victor Lopez said his city doesn’t have plans to discuss the resolution at a future meeting because the issue falls outside the city’s jurisdiction.
Rain Tree said Lopez “emphatically supported” the name change during a Dec. 9 City Council meeting and requested a resolution be submitted for a vote at the Jan. 27 meeting. Lopez told The Bee he doesn’t recall speaking with Rain Tree. Orange Cove has not responded to requests for transcripts of the December council meeting.
Rain Tree said Orange Cove is the largest incorporated community within geographic Squaw Valley (as opposed to the community with the same name) and that getting Orange Cove’s support would be the easiest way to demonstrate community support for a name change.
However, Jennifer Runyon, senior researcher for the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and U.S. Geological Survey, said the legal boundary of Orange Cove is about nine miles from the community of Squaw Valley, and that the physical Squaw Valley basin is also outside the city.
The Board on Geographic Names has jurisdiction over the names of unincorporated communities like Squaw Valley and physical features.
“Of course, any local government is welcome to provide an opinion, and we would note that in the case brief,” Runyon said, “but this is more correctly under the jurisdiction of the county supervisors rather than any city government.”
Rain Tree said bringing the issue before Orange Cove was “purely a courtesy” and that he never thought the city had the authority to change the name.
Magsig said last month that while he’d heard from tribal members, “none of the tribes collectively have taken a stand on this.”
“That would matter to me,” Magsig said, “if collectively they came together and spoke with one voice. That would be important, but I have not seen that.”
Some local tribal leaders voiced their support for a name change to The Bee, but said they were not speaking on behalf of their entire tribal council.
Rain Tree said a staff member with Magsig’s office advised him last year that to consider a name change, a Squaw Valley resident should first start a petition to show community support, suggest a new name and reason why, and conduct a public forum to discuss it.
Magsig said that process seems reasonable, but not the way Rain Tree brought the issue before Orange Cove.
“The community of Squaw Valley was left out of the discussion,” Magsig said, “and to me that’s not the right approach.”
Magsig said mailers would “need to go far and wide” and there be town hall meetings to discuss it.
There are few opportunities for that in rural, sparsely-populated Squaw Valley, however. The small, unincorporated community along Highway 180 — largely just visited by tourists driving through it to nearby Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks — doesn’t have its own local government.
Squaw Valley falls within the Fresno County district represented by Magsig, who said he was “personally not going to drive this issue” at the board of supervisors after receiving many comments for and against changing the name.
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Shirley Guevara, vice chairperson of the Dunlap Band of Mono Indians, and her daughter Taweah Garcia, a tribal council member for the band, are among many speaking out in support of changing the name. They said they are not speaking on behalf of their entire tribal council, however, which has not issued an official statement concerning the name.
Garcia said squaw is a traumatizing word, and she previously had to laugh about it to deal with that trauma.
“It has so much meaning and so much more behind it,” Garcia said as she started to cry.
Garcia said there are many indigenous women and girls living in the area and she wants them to “feel empowered, to feel proud of themselves, of our culture and our heritage, which we are still teaching them.”
Kenneth Hansen, a political science and American Indian studies professor at Fresno State, agrees with them: “I think they should change the name because it’s offensive and anachronistic.”
Lisa McDonald, 65, a member of the Chukchansi tribe in nearby Coarsegold, also said she’s always seen squaw as a bad word. Still, despite it being offensive, she added, “Why change it now? It’s been there for years ... but squaw is an insulting word.”
Guevara said it’s time to change that kind of thinking.
“People up here become complacent,” Guevara said. “The Natives, they just go along with the flow, go along with what’s happened here — and how dare us speak up for ourselves!? Don’t we know we’re supposed to stay in our place and stay in our lane!?”
After reading many demeaning comments about the name change proposal in local Facebook groups, Guevara said, “Racism has reared its ugly head in Squaw Valley.”
Some say the word “squaw” just refers to a woman, and was derived from the Native languages of tribes on the East Coast. It’s not an indigenous word to tribes in the West.
For Guevara, she said it’s as offensive as the N-word is to African Americans. She said those arguing “squaw” meant something different decades ago than it does today to Native women are misinformed.
A local history book by Helen and Forest Clingan shows at least some non-Native residents in rural Fresno County were already aware in 1985, when the book published, that Squaw Valley was a controversial name.
“(Incidentally,” the Clingans wrote, “the word ‘squaw’ originates in the East from the Algonquin word for woman, of whatever tribe. It was never used by western Indians, and many of the Indian women feel that it is insulting.)“
Forest’s parents established Clingan’s Junction store, a local landmark. Helen and Forest’s book, “Oak to Pine to Timberline,” included a chapter with three tales about how Squaw Valley got its name. The “most credible,” they wrote, was the valley was named after a depression in a rock resembling the imprint of a woman’s moccasin, “and since it is pointing into the valley, it designates the entire valley as woman’s land, giving Squaw Valley its name.”
The other two tales noted: The valley was a place where Native men left their families when they went to battle, and that the men were “killed off in battle.”
“The only trouble with accepting that tale,” the Clingans wrote, “is that the Squaw Valley Yokuts were a peaceable people who spent little if any time at war.”
The Yokuts and Mono encompass many traditional tribes.
The Clingans’ daughter, Susan Loucks, also a Fresno County Historical Society volunteer like her mother, said if the name bothers Native people then it’s appropriate to change it.
“We need to start being sensitive to different ethnicities,” Loucks said. “I don’t think we have taught history except from an Anglo-white perspective, and I think there’s a lot more to American history than most of us have ever been taught.”
Elizabeth Laval, president of the Fresno County Historical Society, said the Simpson Drake family were the first recorded non-Native people to settle in Squaw Valley, in 1869. She also noted the origin story from the Clingans about the moccasin.
Library of Congress librarian Kelly Bilz in the Geography and Map Division found an early reference to Squaw Valley, Fresno County in a 1884 Idaho newspaper.
The town’s post office was established in 1879, with Joseph Downing as its first postmaster. According to “History of California Post Offices,” it was named because “the predominate inhabitants of the valley were Indian women, hence the name.”
“Post Office names were typically suggested by local communities, not assigned by the Post Office Department,” said Meiko Patton, a U.S. Postal Service spokesperson.
Runyon with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names said the board officially recognized the Fresno County community as Squaw Valley in 1957, although the name had already appeared on U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps by 1922.
Local residents pushed to get the name officially recognized to differentiate it from the Squaw Valley in Placer County, ahead of the 1960 Winter Olympics there. A post office there ended up being called Olympic Valley. Runyon said the Board on Geographic Names has no listing in its database for Squaw Valley or Olympic Valley for a community in Placer County, “just the valley itself which is still Squaw Valley.”
Lenora “Mugs” Cannon, 92, was one of the residents who helped get the community of Squaw Valley, Fresno County officially recognized. She recently sent a letter to Magsig noting her support for keeping the name, but expressed interest to The Bee in learning more about Rain Tree and his campaign.
“I want it to stay Squaw Valley,” Cannon said. “It’s been that way all the time, and I’ve been close friends with the Indian people and it’s always been something they kind of liked.”
Sue Hambley, a longtime Squaw Valley resident who also taught at the school there in the 1960s, said at least half of her students at that time were Native American and that all the students got along.
“They were all wild Indians — they were all normal kids and they all treated each other like people,” she said. “They weren’t segregated and they didn’t want to be.”
Hambley said it’s sad to see “silly prejudices” that should be long gone popping up on Facebook recently. She’s open to a name change.
“How do the Indians feel about that? If it insults my friends ... if it’s really offensive to them,” Hambley said, “but I’ve been here over 50 years and no one’s ever complained.”
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California sponsored a genocide against Native Americans in California, authorizing nearly $1.3 million in the 1850s, a huge sum for that time, to arm militias that slaughtered thousands of indigenous people across the state.
The first settlers came into Squaw Valley, Fresno County during this era of extermination.
Towns in Northern California paid bounties for the scalps of Native Americans, and the state treasury reimbursed many local governments for their expenses.
Squaw Valley Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe addressed California’s cruel history in its decision last year to change the name of its resort after doing extensive research into the history of the word “squaw” and reaching out to tribes for input.
Ron Cohen, president and chief operating officer of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, presented the findings in a virtual town hall meeting last summer. From the 1840s to 1900 in California, one slide noted, “dispossession, kidnapping, rape, and enslavement were common features of an Indian woman’s life during this time.”
Here are some early examples of the word “squaw” by writers in the 1800s that the resort shared:
— “ ... the crafty ‘squaw’ ... the squalid and withered person of this hag.”
— “ ... the universal ‘squaw’ – squat, angular, ragged, wretched, and insect-infected.”
They also noted stereotype analysis from scholars, including: “The squaw is the ‘darker twin’ of Pocahontas and the ‘anti-Pocahontas.’”
Laura Wass, an activist with the American Indian Movement, also talked about the word’s negative connotation.
“During the extermination period of the 1850s, many women and children were slaughtered,” Wass said, “after that period when Indians were given allotted land (after being forcibly removed from our ancestor’s land), Euro-invaders would marry Indian women so they could get their land and murder them after.”
She said these men “also would murder their Indian husbands then marry the Indian widow just for the land only to throw them out. This barely speaks to the atrocities committed against our women for generations – as the Euro-invaders ‘squaws.’ Many of the old California ranches and farms were gotten through these means.”
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Runyon with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names is keenly aware in her work about “squaw” being offensive.
“It’s been a constant request in the last 15 to 20 years,” she said of proposals to change names with “squaw” in them.
There’s about 325 fewer squaw names in the board’s database nationwide now than there was 20 years ago. Approximately 800 squaw names still exist, Runyon said, although not all of those are the responsibility of the board.
A number of those changed recently were in Oregon, after its state legislature called for eliminating “squaw” in geographic names more than a decade ago.
Runyon is one of three researchers for the federal Board on Geographic Names, which has been increasingly busy in recent years with name-change requests.
“We are reactive,” she said of the federal names committee and board. “We don’t look for things to change.”
That might change in California, she said. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last fall that he wants to “expand representation and increase transparency” for the California Advisory Committee on Geographic Names.
Runyon said that California committee had not received a proposal about renaming Squaw Valley, Fresno County, either. She said the California committee hasn’t met since February 2020 and before that, they usually met twice a year. The federal names committee meets monthly, however, and quarterly for the federal board, based in Washington, D.C. Runyon said the California committee usually refers initial research to her office to start.
Runyon said anyone can request to change a name, what starts with filling out a proposal form with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Those interested in sharing comments about name change proposals can also email BGNEXEC@usgs.gov.
She said proposals can include requests to change multiple names in an area. Near the community of Squaw Valley in Fresno County, the physical basin there is also called Squaw Valley, and there’s a Squaw Lake in the area.
Nearby, in Auberry, Bureau of Land Management’s Squaw Leap Management Area (an administrative/cultural name not under BGN’s purview) was renamed in 2003 to the San Joaquin River Gorge Management Area.
“However,” Runyon added, “no proposal has ever been submitted to the BGN to change the name of the physical feature. It remains officially Squaw Leap.”
Runyon’s research after receiving a proposal includes reaching out to elected officials and government agencies for input. Congress has changed names in the past, too, but Runyon said that’s not preferable, since her office has a process in place to research and gather public comments.
She said her office is also legally required to ask all 574 federally recognized tribes for input, which have 60 days to respond.
There isn’t a federally recognized tribe in Squaw Valley, however. One of the closest tribes to that area, the Dunlap Band, also isn’t federally recognized. Leaders of the Dunlap band said that’s in part because some Native families there historically just received allotted lands from a federal land office in Visalia. So, when agents later designated rancherias to house tribal members in need (land bases that later helped many tribes become federally recognized) they didn’t add one in Dunlap after finding Native people there already had allotments.
The federal government has been notoriously slow in issuing decisions about tribal petitions for federal acknowledgment, with many tribes in California waiting decades for feedback. The Dunlap Band has a letter of intent to become federally recognized, but hasn’t yet sent in a petition for acknowledgment.
Rain Tree said his campaign to change the name of Squaw Valley is not a “tribally coordinated effort,” largely because some non-federally recognized tribes have had applications pending for decades and are “terrified of retaliation.”
Elizabeth Hutchins-Kipp, chairperson of Big Sandy Rancheria, a federally-recognized tribe in nearby Auberry, told The Bee last month that Big Sandy was taking a neutral stance, deferring to Native people in the Squaw Valley and Dunlap area. Hutchins-Kipp did point out, however, how Squaw Leap in her area was changed to the San Joaquin River Gorge. Tribal councils for several other tribes in Fresno and Madera counties didn’t respond to The Bee’s requests for comment.
Another local name controversy recently was a campaign last year to change Spook and Hangtree lanes in Oakhurst. Madera County hasn’t decided whether to change those names. A public meeting about the issue hasn’t been held. The road signs were removed because of vandalism concerns and have not been put back.
In December, Fresno Unified School District announced it would change Fresno High School’s Warrior mascot depicting a Native American caricature.
Regarding Squaw Valley, Supervisor Magsig said a “healthy debate about these issues is a good thing,” but shared concerns about some name changes across the country, including schools, and monuments being removed.
“Today there are many statues being torn down and things being renamed, all in the name of trying to right wrongs,” Magsig said, “but at the end of the day all of us need to look within ourselves ... instead of changing others around us.”
He added that we “cannot erase our history,” but “it doesn’t mean we have to follow what our forefathers have done.”
The Squaw Valley Public Service District in Placer County changed its name last year to Olympic Valley Public Service District. Spokespeople for Squaw Valley Ski Resort said they expect to announce a new name for their resort later this winter.
“As much as we cherish the memories we associate with our resort name,” Cohen said in a news release, “we must accept that these emotional attachments do not justify our continuing use of a word that is widely accepted to be a racist and sexist slur. We will find a new name that reflects our core values, storied past, and respect for all those who have enjoyed this land.”
Morning Star Gali, whose aunt is the Dunlap Band’s vice chairperson, has helped with a number of campaigns to change offensive names and remove statues across California. She’s a member of the Pit River Tribe and project director for Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples.
Of those who want to keep the Squaw Valley, Fresno County name, Gali asked, “Why are we accepting of misogyny?”
“Why are we accepting of racism and this demeaning usage in a way to uplift and celebrate some sort of history that doesn’t exist? Why aren’t we renaming it in a way that is celebratory and honoring of the local people?”
