SAN FRANCISCO — A popular California ski resort whose name included a derogatory term for Native American women changed its name to Palisades Tahoe on Monday. Resort officials had begun searching for a new name last year amid a reckoning over racial injustice.
The renaming of Squaw Valley Ski Resort is one of many efforts nationally to address a history of colonialism and oppression against Native Americans and other people of color that includes removing statues of Christopher Columbus.
The word “squaw,” derived from the Algonquin language, may have once simply meant “woman,” but over generations, the word morphed into a misogynist and racist term to disparage Indigenous women, according to experts.