Our mountain is Tahoma, not Rainier. Now’s the time for Washington to change name

The names of our region’s cities, rivers and landmarks are a mix of tribal and English names. Many of the latter originate from the expeditions in 1792 led by English explorer George Vancouver and in 1841, when Lt. Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy explored the inland waters and adjoining lands and was responsible for naming a large portion of the landmarks.

Fox, Ketron, Maury and McNeil Islands all were named during the Wilkes expedition, while Vashon Island and Puget Sound can be attributed to Vancouver. He also took the liberty to name the most iconic of Washington’s landmarks — Mount Rainier.

Whereas many English names that have stuck can be attributed to crew members of Vancouver or Wilkes, Rainier was an 18th century British admiral who fought against and killed Americans during the Revolutionary War.

As we start the new year, we think it’s the right time for our state Legislature to take steps to return the original name to the mountain — Tahoma, a Puyallup tribal word that means “Mother of waters.”

In doing so, they will help right a wrong that has hung over our mountain and our region for more than 200 years.

Connie McCloud, cultural director for the Puyallup Tribe, has said many times that she thinks the mountain should be named “Tahoma” — a name that is central to the tribe’s history and culture.

Making that change would be acting in the same spirit that inspired the City of Tacoma in 2019 to name the “Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge” over the Puyallup River.

In addition, the Port of Tacoma’s habitat site on the Hylebos Creek was named “Place of Circling Waters” by the Puyallup Tribe, derived from the Twulshootseed name, kal’-ka-lukw-al-kwo.’

Instead of naming the mountain after someone who never set foot in Washington, we should use the Tahoma name to honor the indigenous people who lived in this region long before there was a City of Tacoma, a State of Washington or a Port of Tacoma.

Every day when our longshore men and women in Tacoma work with huge container ships and towering container cranes, they do so with the mountain providing a scenic background to the city’s working waterfront.

Longshore workers recognize the connection between the location of many of these terminals and the original Puyallup Tribe reservation land back in the 1880s.

Renaming the mountain would help acknowledge that connection between the mountain, the Tacoma Tideflats and our longshore workforce.

Over the last 100 years, there have been various attempts to “do the right thing” and remove “Rainier” from our region’s cherished mountain. Past supporters of those efforts have included Will Rogers, the Smithsonian Institution, Teddy Roosevelt and even Tacoma’s own Bing Crosby.

None of these efforts succeeded.

Name changes of this magnitude can, and have, happened in the past. In 2015 Alaska’s Mount McKinley was renamed to Denali when President Obama restored the Alaska Native name with deep cultural significance to the tallest mountain in North America.

Denali’s former name was long regarded as an example of cultural imperialism in which a Native American name with historical roots was replaced by an American one having little to do with the place.

Today, we strongly believe the right thing to do is to rename our mountain “Mount Tahoma. ”If they can do it in Alaska, then we should also be able to do it here in Washington state.

So let’s all resolve to make Mount Tahoma happen in 2021 and rightly return the mountain to an honorable name worthy of its significance to our region.

Don Meyer is an elected Port of Tacoma commissioner and former executive director of the Foss Waterway Development Authority. Jared Faker is president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 23, based in Fife.

This story was originally published January 17, 2021 at 12:00 PM.