Squaw Bay Renamed Birdsong Bay
The Department of Interior announced Thursday that Squaw bay in Alpena has been renamed Birdsong Bay.
It’s one of almost 650 geographic features that used the word squaw and were renamed by the Board on Geographic Names. The changes were made to distance from the term, given it’s past history of being used as an offensive ethnic, racial and sexist slur, particularly for indigenous women.
The task force in charge of finding new names for all of the locations received more than 1,000 recommendations. Almost 70 tribal governments also pitched in, giving another several hundred recommendations.
