Northern Arizona University’s student voice since 1914 Vol. 118 |Language Issue | March 1 - May 1, 2024
NEWS
Indigenous students work to restore San Francisco peak to the Hopi name
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CHLOE LEGAY
round the country, efforts to remove site names with racist origins and restore their Indigenous roots are pushing through state and federal government processes. In Flagstaff, a group of high school students led the fight to rename Agassiz Peak with the Hopi word for the mountain, Öo’mawki. Students in the Flagstaff High School Native American Club, known as the Indigenous Youths of Flagstaff, hosted a workshop in March 2020. Activist Sarra Tekola from Seattle-based organization Women of Color Speak Out tasked the students to write a press release as a group. After the teenagers deliberated on potential topics, they planned a project to permanently alter Flagstaff’s history. Their assignment turned into a campaign to restore the original Hopi name for the second-highest San Francisco Peak. Almost three years later, on Oct. 24, the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names (ASBGHN) approved the name change from Agassiz Peak to Öo’mawki. However, federal approval from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is still needed as the Peaks are within the Coconino National Forest, which the United States Forest Service manages. Darrell Marks is the Native American mentor for Flagstaff High School and father to Makaius Marks, a Flagstaff High School alum and current NAU senior who assisted the Indigenous Youths in the name change approval. “For the youth, it was an empowering opportunity to do something that to some people felt not as significant, but the conversations and the narratives that came out of the work that they did, and the people that they met with and the scale in which
they collected stories and conversations with across the country is evidence that even small things like a name for a space has a lot of importance,” Darrell Marks said. Swiss-American scientist Louis Agassiz is the namesake for sites internationally due to his impact on geological and zoological research in the 19th century. However, his legacy has been scrutinized, as he is known for promoting scientific racism. Agassiz was a proponent of polygenism, the pseudoscientific theory that different races evolved from separate species. Polygenicists believed white people evolved to have superior genetics, a concept that some American southerners used to justify the existence of slavery. This recent reconsideration of Agassiz’s relevance as a historical figure has led to the renaming of many of these locations. In November 2020, Flagstaff City Council renamed Agassiz Street to W.C. Riles Drive after NAU’s first Black student, Wilson C. Riles. After researching Agassiz’s history, the Flagstaff High School students settled on pushing to rename Agassiz Peak to Öo’mawki because of the name’s Hopi translation as “house of clouds.” Makaius Marks said the name carries both literal and symbolic meanings. “You can see that there are always clouds surrounding it, and you can see it in the figurative sense too because people from all around the world come here, plant their roots, they are this community, they are the house of clouds,” Makaius Marks said. More than 13 tribes have historical roots in and around the San Francisco Peaks. Makaius Marks said the Indigenous Youths were initially at odds about which tribe’s language should reflect the peak’s name. Makaius Marks poses for a portrait in front of the San Francisco Peaks, Feb. 18. Chloe Legay | The Lumberjack
See PEAKS on PAGE 4
LIFESTYLE
The unspoken way women communicate GRACE MEINEMA Editors note: This story contains mention of sexual violence.
O
ne in three women have been subjected to physical or sexual violence, according to data collected by UN Women. As a result, many women rely on each other for safety, especially in public and nighttime settings that are potentially more dangerous, like bars or parties. Due to the dangers women often face, they developed safekeeping behaviors, or “safety work,” to protect themselves, including avoiding activities after dark. Along with these behaviors, women have the ability to silently communicate with each other. This trait stems from a mutual understanding of what it entails to be a woman and the experiences that come with the identity. Women developed this skill to protect themselves and other women. Makayla Bradley is a second-year psychological science major at NAU. She said women’s ability to communicate with one another nonverbally is a superpower. “Women go through a lot of the same things, so when you are able to read expressions, even when it’s just a microexpression, that’s extremely important in a situation that’s very loud and crowded,” Bradley said. A micro-expression refers to a subtle facial expression
that lasts a fraction of a second and is often involuntary. Bradley is also a member of the sorority Delta Phi Epsilon and said fraternity settings are frequently overwhelming and packed, making it more important for women to look out for each other. “Going into a frat setting, it can become more like a thing of safety,” Bradley said. “If something becomes a little bit sketchy, there’s almost a silent conversation that happens between women.” It is important for women to look out for one another, Bradley said, because a woman never knows when she might be the one who needs help. At parties, Bradley said it is not difficult for women to differentiate between when a girl is having fun and when they are distressed. “It’s easy to pick up on these signals just because I feel like you’re able to know when you’re putting them out yourself, and you would hope that someone will be able to pick up on them,” Bradley said. Another reason why women can communicate like this is because of empathy, Bradley said. Many women have experienced situations where they are in danger or feel unsafe, and because of that, they know to look out for one another. Souksavanh Keovorabouth, a Diné assistant professor at
NAU in women and gender studies and applied Indigenous studies, holds a doctorate in women, gender and sexuality studies from Oregon State University. Keovorabouth said this superpower is not limited to cisgender women. “I’ll add queerness and transness into this because I think there’s a common way that women, and women of color, but also queer people, trans people, etcetera have adopted this way of communicating,” Keovorabouth said. “This way of being able to hopefully lean on each other in times of need which I think is very powerful because a lot of the times our groups, communities, have been marginalized.” Members of these communities can rely on each other because they know what it is like to be silenced, Keovorabouth said. “[Silent communication] is not meant to keep us silent,” Keovorabouth said. “We’re not continuing on to be silent within those spaces. We’re doing it to acknowledge solidarity. We’re building a connection between each other that allows us to exist in these spaces.” Women and marginalized groups often silently communicate because they need to wait to be in a safe space to communicate openly, Keovorabouth said. See WOMEN on PAGE 11
Left: Mei-te Coco (right) chats with a friend at Rendezvous inside Hotel Monte Vista, Feb. 10. Right: Kristin Polacca (left) darts her eyes at Aneesa Molina (right) at Collins Irish Pub & Grill, Feb. 10. Lian Muneno | The Lumberjack