A task force commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to come up with replacements for geographic features with the word “squaw” in their names has released its proposed list.

Colorado has 28 features, including four that cross state boundaries with Oklahoma and Utah, with “squaw” in the name.

Haaland declared the word “squaw” derogatory in November and charged the newly created Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force with coming up with replacements.

The task force looked at names from five nearby features, with the intent to pick one of those for the new name. The task force will avoid duplicate names or other names that could be considered offensive, and probably will avoid names of people, since it has little time to vet those names, according to Jennifer Runyon from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, who works with the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board.

The names released Monday are under a public comment period: 90 days for tribal governments and 60 days for everyone else. The deadline for public comment for both is April 24. 

Colorado’s Geographic Naming Advisory Board has been mulling the rapidly moving situation for the past two months, and last week came up with its own way of responding: a form on its website where people could submit proposed name changes for the geographic features under review. The form, however, isn’t ready yet for submissions. 

The deadline for submissions is April 4.

The Colorado board will meet on April 10 to review suggestions and forward those recommendations to Gov. Jared Polis, who has final say. Those suggestions will then head to the federal task force.

Two locations in Colorado already have replacement suggestions, submitted to the federal board just last month, and are included on the list released Tuesday by the task force.

The task force came up with replacement names for 655 geographic features on federal lands in the United States. The word “squaw,” which is believed to be an English version of a Mohawk word for the female genitalia, is offensive to Native Americans. 

In making the announcement last November, Haaland said “racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage – not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression.” Haaland is an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo and a former congresswoman from New Mexico. 

Colorado’s proposed list is in the Excel spreadsheet below.

Replacements names for Colorado features with the word “squaw” in the title, as proposed by a task force commissioned by US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

The Colorado board has already taken action on the first renaming of a mountain with “squaw”: It sent a recommendation to the governor to rename Squaw Mountain in Clear Creek County to Mestaa’?hehe Mountain. The governor approved that recommendation and the federal board signed off on it in early December.