Medicine Root will scrub white man's name from tribal community

This blogger has been arguing for Lakota names on South Dakota's geological features for nearly thirty years. 

A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills, a county and national forest in Montana are named after a murderer. During the Battle of Greasy Grass on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana George Custer attacked the encampment where the elderly, women and children were hidden and during the Washita Massacre he held a similar contingent as hostages and human shields. 

Crow Peak or Paha Karitukateyapi just outside Spearditch is translated as "the hill where the Crows were killed" stemming from a battle between the Lakota and Crow Nations. The Crow allied with Custer and the United States Army believing they would reclaim the Black Hills. Custer’s name is on a peak in the Black Hills National Forest and should be removed. It's time to strike his name from the Custer National Forest, too. George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features. Crook City near Whitewood and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal. 

Revisionist history turned the Wounded Knee Massacre into a battle but Senator Mike Rounds (NAZI-SD) said he won't vote for the Senate companion to the Remove the Stain Act that would rescind Medals of Honor for twenty war criminals responsible for the slaughter of children, women and men in 1890 at Wounded Knee in occupied South Dakota. But he and the South Dakota Republican Party are hardly the only racists in the colonized American West. 

Outside Yellowstone National Park the Hayden Valley memorializes Ferdinand V. Hayden who advocated for the extermination of tribal people and Mount Doane is named for Lieutenant Gustavus Doane who led a massacre of the Piikani, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. One reason Republicans don't like Common Core history standards is that the curriculum long-ignored by textbooks includes genocide and near-extermination of American Indians by European colonialism.

The South Dakota Board of Geographic Names spent more of their time on renaming the Squaw Humper Dam than on the proposal to change the name of a local jurisdiction to Oglala Lakota County. Now Bismarck, North Dakota is considering a change for a mal-named park. 

Democratic former Representative Kevin Killer backed the name change of the South Dakota county from one based on white conquest and helped get the issue passed in 2015. He is a recipient of a Bush Foundation grant. 

Sunday night, the Medicine Root District executive board voted unanimously 4-0 to change the name of the community of Kyle to Little Wound. “This decision is something I really applaud, it’s the right thing to do,” said Kevin Killer, past SD state legislator who led the movement to change the name of Shannon County to Oglala Lakota County, “there’s not enough time to put together a referendum vote by the general election but they should take the issue to the county commission.” 

Read the rest here.