Alaska state House takes stand against Trump effort to erase Denali's name
I had expected that those Republican legislators who are afraid to counter anything emitted by Donald Trump would be intimidated into voting against House Joint Resolution 4 in Juneau today.
The measure in the Alaska Legislature calling for the retention of Denali’s traditional name should have been approved unanimously, but 10 Trumpists voted against it.
The House Rules Committee held a hearing on the matter Monday, creating a revised version that was approved 28-10 by the full House, with Rep. Kevin McCabe calling for reconsideration. Passage of this measure won’t stop Trump, but it’s a good idea to get this on the record.
There was a lot of piffle from the Trumpicans, who wanted to amend the resolution to praise Trump for promoting oil development, but that’s irrelevant to this topic. The Trumpists who voted against Denali are: Jamie Allard, Julie Coulombe, Kevin McCabe, Elexie Moore, Mike Prax, Dan Saddler, Cathy Tilton, Frank Tomaszewski, Jubilee Underwood and Sarah Vance.
The arrogant way in which the Trump edict came about, issued with no attempt to consider the opinions of Alaskans, will help ensure that the mountain remains Denali, not McKinley, to Alaskans.
The Alaska Legislature acted on this matter for the first time 50 years ago when it approved a bipartisan resolution seeking federal approval to restore the name Denali to the nation’s highest mountain, removing McKinley from the peak.
The renaming of McKinley as “Denali would be a fitting and proper gesture to a large segment of the Alaskan population and would be originally Alaskan,” the 1975 Legislature said.
There is a long history to this, much of it unknown to the Alaska Republican politicians and bloviators who think that Trump’s attempt to resuscitate McKinley is simply a smackdown of Barack Obama, who officially made it Denali in 2015.
Prospector William Dickey was looking for gold in 1896 when he fell in with other prospectors who favored tying the money supply to silver. Dickey, a fan of gold, said the first news he got after leaving central Alaska was about the nomination of McKinley for the presidency. He was also fed up with listening to his camping companions talk on and on about silver.
“He retaliated by naming the mountain after the champion of the gold standard,” Gov. Jay Hammond wrote in the 1970s to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names.
“To those with even the most casual interest in Alaska and this mountain, it must be obvious these are simply not valid reasons for the name McKinley,” Hammond wrote.
After the first successful climb of the mountain, in 1913, Hudson Stuck published his account of “The Ascent of Denali” and said that those who viewed the mountain in all its majesty “would be deeply moved with the appropriateness of the simple Native name, for simplicity is always a quality of true majesty.”
In 1975, Sen. Ted Stevens opposed removing McKinley’s name, perhaps because Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, his political nemesis, supported it. Gravel was gone by 1980, however, and Stevens had a change of heart, fighting for the rest of his days to make the mountain Denali, which meant trying to get the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to move.
“It's time we listened to the Native people of Alaska," Stevens said. "This mountain is the largest in North America. It was named by the Natives long before we arrived."
Stevens was stymied in his efforts for the rest of his Senate career, however, because of stalling tactics by Rep. Ralph Regula, whose district in Ohio included McKinley’s hometown.
Regula, who studied at the William McKinley School of Law, was a one-issue politician as far as the Interior Department was concerned. He vowed to defend the McKinley name to his last breath. Regula celebrated McKinley's birthday every Jan. 29 by handing out scarlet carnations, the state flower adopted in McKinley's memory -- to fellow lawmakers. He had no interest in compromise.
At first, Regula put a regular rider in appropriations bills to keep McKinley’s name safe from erasure.
Stevens blocked money for a coal gasification plant in Stark County, Ohio in 1991, forcing Regula to drop his rider from an appropriation bill to get his gas plant. Regula then changed tactics, the Akron Beacon Journal reported, and blocked Stevens on Denali with a new strategy.
The federal name board in the Interior Department had a long-standing policy to never act on name change requests as along as legislation was pending in Congress.
Regula introduced a one-paragraph bill every two years that said the mountain would remain McKinley. There were no hearings and no votes. But this meant that legislation was always pending, so nothing happened.
Stevens thought, correctly, that this was absurd. It allowed a single person to exercise veto power.
“It’s not a loophole, it’s just an ostrich-type decision to stick their head in the sand every time a congressman breathes,” Stevens said in 1991.
“I can assure you, this is going to be acted on in my lifetime,” Stevens said in 1991. “I would prefer to see our Denali name back, but I could understand if the board reached the opposite decision.”
Stevens was wrong on the timing, but right about his prediction, until Trump came along. In 2015, five years after Stevens died, President Obama made the name change that had long been requested by the Alaska Legislature, Alaska governors and the Alaska Congressional delegation.
The names McKinley and Denali were once used interchangeably in Alaska in reference to the mountain and still are by many people, but Denali has had the upper hand in recent years, especially among young people.
The park was changed from McKinley to Denali National Park under the Alaska Lands Act in 1980. The name of the park is a big factor of course, and so is the use of the name in popular culture, from the GMC Denali to Denali State Bank.
Regula and the other Ohio politicians thought that compromise should have ended the discussion for all time, but nothing ends the discussion for all time. The Tanana Chiefs Conference, among others, pushed for the mountain’s traditional name to be restored.
In 2001, Regula told a reporter he thought that Alaskans didn’t really care about the name.
''I did an informal survey when I was up there a couple of years ago,'' he said. ''Most people could care less.''
He didn’t talk to enough people.
Now with Trump’s unilateral order to bring back McKinley, the time has come to follow a suggestion made a quarter-century ago by State Historian Jo Antonson—get state agencies and members of the public to keep using the name Denali to establish a record that the mountain is still known as Denali. The legislative resolutions are a step in this direction.
When Trump is out of office, the state can apply to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names to correct the maps.
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