Good, bipartisan, and well-past-due news:
President Obama in Anchorage on Monday will announce the renaming of Mount McKinley, honoring the 25th president, to Mount Denali, an Athabascan name used by generations of Alaska Natives that means “the great one.”
The White House said Obama would rename the continent’s tallest peak in order to improve relations with Native Americans. As a central part of the Athabascan creation story, Denali carries cultural importance to many Alaska Natives.
Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, said in an interview Sunday that the new policy announcement would have a concrete as well as psychological effect on Native Alaskans. “It’s symbolic,” Kitka said, “but the practical thing is now on all the maps and all the descriptions it will have the traditional name. That is wonderful, it is timely and the right thing to do.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
While steadfastly opposed for years by Ohio and its Congressional delegation (President McKinley was from Ohio, and there are not many peaks in the Buckeye State worth naming), this move has long been sought not just by the Alaska Federation of Natives, but by Alaska's state government as a whole:
The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917. The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali, which is how it is referred to locally. 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
And quite recently by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski:
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, introduced legislation in January to rename the peak, but Ohio lawmakers sought to block the move. In June, an Interior Department official said in testimony before Congress that the administration had “no objection” to Ms. Murkowski’s proposed name change.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
So, this is not some "politically correct" move by the President, but something the state of Alaska -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- has been officially requesting for quite some time.
The move comes ahead of President Obama's trip to Alaska (where he will become the first sitting president to visit north of the Arctic Circle), which will also include a variety of other policy announcements and shifts, such as:
The White House also announced on Sunday that Mr. Obama was expanding government support for programs to allow Alaska Natives to be more involved in developing their own natural resources, including an initiative to include them in the management of Chinook salmon fisheries, a youth exchange council focusing on promoting “an Arctic way of life,” and a program allowing them to serve as advisers to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
http://www.nytimes.com/...