Alaska's Heritage...

[Tunnelcat]

...Not Ohio's. So why in the hell do Ohio Republicans have a argument with the name change of a mountain clear up in Alaska? I think the new name "Denali", or "The Tall One", is a far more apropos name than McKinley ever was. It's also a local name. The mountain was called "Denali" for millennia by Alaskan native tribes, and it shouldn't have been named after some long dead president who never set foot in Alaska anyway. The white man has taken far too much from the native peoples who were here first.The change should stand. Tough cookies McKinley and Ohio.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-ren ... 35829.html

http://news.yahoo.com/congressman-quest ... itics.html

[callmeslick]

oh, it's just another cheesy excuse to whine about Obama, as best as I can tell from the reports. No one in Ohio really gives a crap, they've called that mountain Denali in Alaska for like forever.

[Sergeant Thorne]

The folks at Wikipedia didn't waste any time with this one.

The Koyukon Athabaskans who inhabit the area around the mountain refer to the peak as Dinale or Denali. The name is based on a Koyukon word for "high" or "tall".[21] During the Russian ownership of Alaska, the common name for the mountain was Bolshaya Gora (Russian: Большая Гора, bolshaya = Russian for big; gora = Russian for mountain), which is the Russian translation of Denali.[22] It was briefly called Densmore's Mountain in the late 1880s and early 1890s[23] after Frank Densmore, an Alaskan prospector who was the first European to reach the base of the mountain.[24]

In 1896, a gold prospector named it McKinley as political support for then-presidential candidate William McKinley, who became president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917.[25] The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is called locally.[6] However, a 1975 request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to do the same was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district included McKinley's hometown of Canton.[26]

Efforts to rename the mountain did not end there, however. On August 30, 2015, just ahead of a presidential visit to Alaska, the Barack Obama administration announced that the name Denali would be restored in line with the Alaska Geographic Board's designation.[27][28] Sally Jewell, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, said the change had been "a long time coming".[29] The renaming of the mountain received praise from Alaska's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, who had previously introduced legislation to accomplish the name change, but it drew criticism from several members of Ohio's congressional delegation, some of whom suggested Obama's actions improperly circumvented Congress.[30]

Maybe the United States should wipe out Mount Rushmore and restore its Native American name, huh? Personally I wouldn't see any problem with keeping the U.S., official name "Mount McKinley", and also calling it by its local name "Denali". What's the big deal? I don't think dropping a naming honoring a U.S. president stems from anything positive (*redacted*).

[Tunnelcat]

The native Alaskans have called the mountain Denali for centuries. Alaskans have been petitioning to change the name from McKinley since 1975. Forty years of stonewalling by Ohio congressmen is long enough for Alaskans to wait. Alaska should have the right to name the features in their own state. Ohio can rename some land feature in their state after McKinley if they want to honor him. Even if some prospector had named the mountain after Kennedy, I would still respect Alaska's desire to rename the mountain for their own heritage.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mount-mckin ... 1440970559

[Sergeant Thorne]

Alaska had already exercised their right to rename the mountain. This is something more.

[woodchip]

The Dems don't want the Ohioans mad at them and lose the presidential election...so maybe a bad move by Obama.

[callmeslick]

yeah, just look at the mobs forming in the streets of Cincy, Cleveland and Toledo. I'm certain that the naming of a mountain in Alaska will be the primary driver at the polls in 2016. Yup, sounds plausible.

[Tunnelcat]

Well, now there's a resurgent move to rename Mt. Hood to Mt. "Wy'east", which was the name of a native Indian brave from one version of the Multnomah tribe's legend. They also called Mt. Saint Helens "Loowit" and Mt. Adams "Klickitat".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood

I think they should change it. Being named Mt. Hood by a British explorer, all to honor Lord Samuel Hood, a British Admiral, was ridiculous. The British lost the Revolutionary War and specifically the Battle of the Chesapeake, or we'd still be a British colony. So why keep the name in a country that's not part of the British Empire nor wanted to be?

[callmeslick]