Slow progress on renaming Oregon’s offensive place names

For decades, Native people have pushed to remove Oregon’s derogatory place names. Current renaming efforts are moving forward with minimal tribal involvement.

“It’s been decades of work, not just for the state, but for the tribes,” said Brenda Meade, Chairwoman of the Coquille Indian Tribe. “If they are concerned about the tribes not engaging, it’s because it’s so cumbersome of a process.”

Meade continued, “I don’t know if the process is broken or there’s just so many layers of bureaucracy to some of these things, but any time there (are) things that reflect the bad part of our history, it’s something that needs to go away.”

A year after the passage of the state Dignity In Place Act, aimed at replacing derogatory names, few official names have been changed.

The 2025 act is a continuation of numerous renaming efforts over the last 25 years. It goes back to 2001 when former Gov. Kate Brown, then a Democratic state senator, sponsored legislation disallowing the use of the word s-word, a slur against Native American women, in the name of any public place.

Passed in June of 2025, the Dignity In Place Act called upon the Oregon Geographic Names Board to create a list of offensive place names and submit recommendations for new names to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names within three years.

The state board has since compiled a list of 90 derogatory geographic place names. More than half are pejorative racial slurs against Black communities, and nearly a third against Native Americans.

“These aren’t just names, these are literal derogatory terms, slurs that have been used against our people, our ancestors,” said Devonte Casey, when shown the list of offensive names for the first time. Casey is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz.

Underscore Native News spoke to Casey at the Annual Nesika Illahee Pow-Wow held in Siletz, Oregon, only seven miles away from a “Savage Creek.”  Words like this appear dozens of  times throughout the list.

“They think, ‘Oh, it’s just a name,’ but no, this is historical abuse that has been put on all sorts of people,” Casey said. “It’s like they hate us so much, they don’t want to recognize our existence, our strength, our bravery, but they want to use some of the most hateful and evil rooted words about Black, Indigenous bodies and name this landmark about it.”

So far the federal board, which has the ultimate authority in approving and publishing new place names used on official maps, has approved new names for two places on Oregon’s list.

“Jew Valley” became “Jewish Valley” and “Dago Spring” became “Rattlesnake Bluff Spring.” The state board has 10 more name proposals under consideration posted to its website.

What’s in a name? 

Oregon is riddled with geographical names that mirror its history.

Forced Indian removal relegated Native nations to confederated tribes. Oregon entered the union explicitly prohibiting Black people from living or working within its borders in the 1850s.

“It’s really sad because words matter. Words can heal, and they can also be negative,” Meade said. “Oregon’s a place we love. We need to take care of it, and the people and get this negativity out of our lives, the things we can control. [There’s] so much that we can’t.”

Some instances of a slur are not going to be removed, according to Bruce Fisher, the president of the state name board, because some of these names have familial ties to homesteaders in the late 1800s.

The board decided unanimously in June to recommend changing the name “Coon Hollow” to “PC Coon Hollow” — after Powell Clayton Coon from Lake County — which is included among the 10 name changes actively being considered.

At the same meeting, the board also moved forward with renaming “Dead Indian Rim,” “Dead Indian Mountain” and “Dead Indian Spring” to “Indian Rim,” “Indian Mountain” and “Indian Spring,” dropping the “Dead,” also without opposition.

These proposed changes are acting as placeholders until an interested party suggests something more substantial, according to Fisher.

The effort to rename “Little Savage Creek” in Jackson County, was met with pushback from community members saying the name is connected to the James Savage family, a homesteader who did notable things in the area according to Fisher.

Past renaming efforts and successes

Some federal renaming efforts have moved faster.

In 2021, when then Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland issued an executive order to remove the s-word slur from federal usage, Oregon had already been in the process of renaming hundreds of places under federal jurisdiction containing the term, but dozens remained. According to Fisher, Oregon had the most names using the slur of any state.

The U.S. Department of Interior succeeded in removing that slur from roughly 650  federal geographic features nationwide by 2023. More than 50 of those were in Oregon.

The department used a proximity search to change all of the place names with the s-word to a name shared with neighboring landmarks — so long as it wasn’t a duplicate, according to Fisher.

For example, the former “Squaw Butte” was renamed to “Tap Horn Butte,” a name that is shared with neighboring areas like “Tap Horn Gap” seen on the same geographic feature.

“They didn’t involve the states or stakeholders or anybody, they just did it,” Fisher said.

An arduous process

In total, the state name board has initiated the renaming process for roughly half of the names on the state’s offensive list, according to Fisher.

It can take upwards of a year for the state board to review a proposal and send a final recommendation to the federal board. The state board has to research every proposal and gather letters of support, images of the landmark, landowner approval, and records that prove the new name follows the federal board’s policies.

Anyone can propose a name change, even beyond the list of derogatory names. From there, the board chair assigns the proposal to a board member in closest proximity to the geographic feature and shares the proposal among stakeholders – such as the local county board of commissioners, historical society, tribes and impacted landowners – who are given three months to respond. If stakeholders do not provide a response, the proposal can move forward with only a favorable vote from the board and reviewed for completeness, according to Fisher.

Fisher said the board has a lot of success in getting its proposals approved by the federal board because of the thorough process the 24-member volunteer board is able to conduct. Some state geographic naming authorities only have one member.

Brown, the former governor who sponsored the 2001 renaming law as a state senator, told Underscore Native News that one of the obstacles to finalizing name changes for the ones on the offensive list is that the state doesn’t have jurisdiction over a majority of those place names, only the few that are on state forest land.

“How we talk about things, whether it’s derogatorily or with value and respect, that’s how we treat things and places and people,” Brown said.

Back at the Nesika Illahee Pow-Wow, Devonte Casey says it sheds light on how these offensive names have persisted for so long.

“It shows that a lot of government bodies are still not on the side of making sure that these things are erased from existence because us Indigenous people, us Native people are still alive, still surviving,” Casey said.

This article first appeared on Underscore Native News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ‍Underscore Native News is a nonprofit newsroom committed to Indigenous-centered reporting in the Pacific Northwest and supported by foundations and donor contributions. Follow the outlet on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Bluesky.