The shallow water body near Palos Park, now Cherry Hill Woods Sloughs, may be off the beaten path, but it represents a nationwide effort to remove derogatory words from place names.
in November that declared the word “squaw” derogatory and created a process for reviewing and replacing geographic names that use the term.Formerly known as Laughing Squaw Sloughs, the water feature is one of two sites renamed in Illinois on Sept. 8. The other is an island in Calhoun County formerly known as Squaw Island. It will now be named Calhoun Island.
Dating back to the 1800s, cartoon drawings depicted Indigenous women and used the term in an offensive way, Wiese said. She hopes that removing references to the word in place names will be a step to ensure the next generation won’t be subjected to its offense, or even know of the word at all.Removing references to the word started in Illinois more than a year ago.
“But then I’m like, ‘We can take on more than one project,’ ” Duby said. “So I started looking into how can we correct a wrong.”The group worked with local historians, tribes, school district, state senators and more to gather public support and submit a proposal to the Board on Geographic Names to change the name of the waterway to“The water itself is the lifeblood of our mother Earth,” he added.