Many BYU–Hawaii students are in agreement with President Barack Obama’s choice to rename the country’s tallest peak from McKinley back to Denali in efforts to strengthen ties between the native Alaskan people and the United States Government.
Obama made the announcement on Aug. 31 in Anchorage, Alaska during his three-day visit to the state, according to National Public Radio (NPR).“It’s great to see the government working together with the native people of the land,” said Lucas Garofolo, a junior from California studying English. “It’s truly the natives’ land and we should respect that.”
The White House released a statement saying that the peak was renamed McKinley from Denali in 1896 after a prospector emerged from exploring the mountains of central Alaska and received news that William McKinley had been nominated as a candidate for President of the United States. In an effort to show support, the prospector declared the 20,320-foot peak of the range “Mt. McKinley.”
The name Denali is believed to be central to the Athabascan creation story, the Washington Post reports. The Athabascan people were the original inhabitants of interior Alaska and Denali is a site of cultural significance to many natives. The name Denali has been used for many years and is widely used across the state today, NPR also added.“
I think it’s very respectful to the native people,” said Alex Milne, a junior from California studying business. “Essentially, it’s a step in the right direction for Obama. It created a bond between the two parties that sometimes seem distant.”
Alaska’s elected officials have been trying multiple times to get the U.S. Board on Geographic names to consider using the native name Denali since 1975, the Washington Post also reported. However, in 1980, the park surrounding the peak was renamed Denali, but not the peak itself.
During his trip to Alaska, Obama tried to call attention to the state’s climate change crisis. The White House has described Alaska as the canary in the climate change coal mine, complete with raging wildfires, accelerating ice melt, vanishing glaciers and villages having to relocate because of rising sea levels, according to CNN.
“It’s comforting to know that these climate changes aren’t going unnoticed,” said Benjamin Ho, a junior from Hong Kong studying biology. “I feel that Obama is doing something that makes sense.”
The arctic has warmed almost twice as fast as the rest of the world and portions of northern Alaska have lost a football field’s worth of land a day to coast erosion and sea-level rise, CNN added.
President Obama is the first sitting U.S. President to make a trip to the arctic.