An Interior Department advisory panel has recommended changing the name of Devils Tower, the distinctive rock formation in Wyoming at the country’s oldest national monument and the centerpiece of a long-running debate over place names.
Citing long-standing Native American opposition to the name, the Reconciliation in Place Names Committee, in its meeting last week, voted to recommend renaming the eerie tower, as well as the surrounding area around it, as “Bear Lodge.”
“Tribes have been working on this since 1998,” Howard Dale Valandra, the advisory committee chair and a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve had a lot of debate over it.”
“More than 20 Tribes with close association to the site find the name ‘Devils Tower’ to be offensive and support this renaming proposal,” according to an advisory committee report. The recommendation includes urging Interior to engage with the local community to develop an alternative name for the unincorporated region surrounding the obelisk if Bear Lodge is not supported.
