It has always been Mount Tacoma. Now is the time to make Rainier name change official
It’s time to rekindle the old debate, and reframe it.
Then it’s time to put it to bed, once and for all.
For as long as the volcano in our backyard has commonly been identified on maps as Mount Rainier, there’s been a compelling argument in favor of changing that name.
Haphazardly bestowed in the late 1700s by British explorer George Vancouver, the name Mount Rainier serves as an odd tribute to Peter Rainier, an admiral in the Royal Navy.
As has been previously noted, this has never made any sense. Rainier never stepped foot in the Pacific Northwest and actually fought against American forces during the Revolution. Basically, Rainier is little more than a sad historical afterthought: a man who despised America and was directly tied to British colonialism and all the oppression and wealth-extracting horrors it wrought.
In the words of Brandon Reynon, assistant director of the Puyallup Tribe’s Historic Preservation Department, the colonial re-branding of the mountain is “ridiculous” and serves as a “constant reminder” of “historical trauma.”
As Reynon notes, over thousands of years the volcano that defines the Pacific Northwest’s skyline was given many different names by the area’s indigenous tribes. Locally, the Puyallup Tribe often referred to the mountain as təqʷuʔməʔ in its twulshootseed language, which, when anglicized, is roughly pronounced Tacoma, Takoma or Tahoma.
Then white Europeans showed up with their map makers, commencing a period when “our culture and language were literally beaten, murdered and raped out of us,” Reynon said.
The rest is history, he said, waiting to be rewritten.
“We don’t need permission,” Reynon explained of the cultural and spiritual importance of renaming Mount Rainier.
“That’s Mount Tacoma. It’s just a matter of fact for us.”
Right moment in history
While the common name Mount Rainier might have become ubiquitous in white culture — and lastingly commercialized through cheap beer — there are plenty of obvious reasons why Reynon and so many others who have made similar arguments over the years are correct.
The potential difference this time?
The moment in history might finally be on their side.
Right now, our nation is grappling with the lasting impacts of slavery and the idolization of those who waged battles in support of white supremacy. Whether it’s reconsidering the monuments built in honor of Confederate generals or high schools named after KKK sympathizers, it’s a reckoning long overdue.
At the same time, we shouldn’t exclude the damage done by the attempted white erasure of indigenous tribal culture from this important discussion.
“I think we’re starting to look at all kinds of names, and who they honor, and questioning whether that is really in line with our values,” said Crosscut editor-at-large Knute Berger, whose affinity for Pacific Northwest history includes study of the long-simmering Mount Rainier name debate.
Noting how potentially difficult and complicated a name change would be, Berger said any conversation that helps people better understand the origins of our region should be welcomed, even if it’s painful.
Tacoma historian Michael Sullivan was even more adamant.
“It’s one of the more indefensible place names,” Sullivan said.
“It just seems like it’s such an assertion of power, with no justification, no lasting value.”
End the ‘civic struggle’
If we conclude that it’s time to genuinely wrestle with whether Mount Rainier should be renamed, we must also acknowledge that it’s long past time to ditch the constraints of how this debate has played out so many times in the past.
As Berger, Sullivan and Tacoma Historical Society communications director Kim Davenport all noted, this argument has typically boiled down to a battle among white economic boosters from Tacoma and Seattle.
For more than a century, Tacoma’s leaders have often sought to have the mountain’s name changed to match the city’s. The City of Tacoma’s name also comes from the indigenous name for the region’s most marketable peak, and after the Northern Pacific railroad picked Tacoma as its terminus, they hoped to capitalize.
Meanwhile, Seattle’s power brokers have fought just as hard — if not harder — to make sure the Rainier name stuck. In the battle for economic supremacy, Tacoma was seen as Seattle’s fiercest competition, and the city had little interest in giving the City of Destiny any advantage.
It’s a battle Seattle has won up until this point, but the problem with this framing is obvious.
Historically, to the white players at the forefront, the conversation has always been financially motivated, having little to do with respecting indigenous culture or righting a wrong.
“We’ve all got to get over the whole idea of a civic struggle between Seattle and Tacoma. It’s so long dead. It’s as long dead as the body of Admiral Rainier buried somewhere,” Sullivan said.
‘Epicenter of our culture’
In the months before Confederate monuments startled to topple across the United States, taking another run at restoring Mount Tacoma’s indigenous name is something the Puyallup Tribe’s historic preservation department was gearing up for, Reynon said.
It’s not a new conversation, he noted.
A decade ago, Puyallup tribal activist Robert Satiacum Jr. championed an effort to rename the mountain Ti’Swaq’, in honor of the indigenous people known to live high on the mountain’s slopes.
Like so many before it, Satiacum’s effort fizzled, Reynon said, but he still believes the time is right to give it another shot.
In part, the 2015 renaming of Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali gives him hope
The process won’t necessarily be easy.
The Puyallup Tribe would likely advocate for calling the mountain təqʷuʔməʔ, “with Mount Tacoma or some English spelling going along with it since we know 99% don’t speak twulshootseed,” Reynon said.
Reynon also said engaging different tribes in the conversation would be important, because reaching a consensus might be difficult.
Still, with every passing day — and every lesson allegedly learned by a country attempting to better itself — continuing to call the mountain by the name George Vancouver gave it becomes more and more indefensible, Reynon said.
“The very epicenter of our culture was removed and replaced with a white male from England. I’d like to see that changed back to what we had it,” Reynon said.
“It would be a huge change (for indigenous people),” he added, “and a small step forward for us as a society in acknowledging the wrongs that happened to people for hundreds of years.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
