The “haaland secretary of interior crossword” is a letter from Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke to the Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye. In the letter, Zinke requests that the name of Mount Taylor be changed to something more appropriate.
The future of the US Federal Government is in flux, with many offices losing power to states. One office that has remained relatively unchanged is the Secretary of Interior position, which oversees federal lands like National Parks and Forests. However, one Native American woman recently took action against a name on one such forest – “Derogatory Names.”
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has requested that his department remove derogatory names from federal lands. A committee will review the names and determine if they violate policy or need to be removed by executive order. Although some people say this is a good step, others believe it’s not enough and want all such terms expunged.
Secretarial Orders designate “squaw” as a pejorative word and establish a Reconciliation in Place Names advisory group to identify and eliminate other offensive terms.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Deb Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior, legally initiated a process to examine and change pejorative titles for the country’s geographical features. She also proclaimed “squaw” a pejorative name and directed the Board on Geographic Names, the government agency in charge of designating geographic areas, to put in place processes to remove the term from official use.
“Racist phrases have no place in our lexicon or on government property,” she said. Secretary Haaland said, “Our nation’s lands and waterways should be places to appreciate the outdoors and our shared cultural history, not to perpetuate oppressive legacies.” “Today’s efforts will hasten a crucial process of reconciling disparaging place names and represent a huge step forward in respecting the ancestors who have stewarded our lands from time immemorial,” says the statement.
Secretarial Order 3404 declares the word “squaw” to be disparaging and establishes a government task committee to come up with new names for geographic features on federal property that carry the term. Historically, the phrase has been used as a derogatory ethnic, racial, and sexist insult, especially towards Indigenous women. According to a database kept by the Board on Geographic Names, the name is now used in over 650 federal land divisions.
We’re going to get through this together, Atascadero
Representatives from federal land management agencies, as well as Department diversity, equity, and inclusion specialists, will serve on the newly formed Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force. The task team is required by the Order to communicate with Tribes and consider public comment on potential name changes.
Secretarial Order 3405 also establishes a Federal Advisory Committee to seek, evaluate, and make recommendations on additional disparaging geographic and federal land unit names. Indian tribes, tribal and Native Hawaiian groups, civil rights, anthropology, and history professionals, and members of the general public will all be represented on the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names. It would create a procedure for soliciting and assisting with applications to the Secretary of State to modify disparaging names, which will involve consultation with Tribes, state and local governments, and the general public.
The Secretarial Orders, taken together, will hasten the process of identifying and replacing disparaging names. Currently, the Board on Geographic Names is designed to respond on a case-by-case basis, with proponents bearing the burden of identifying the objectionable name and suggesting a replacement. The process of obtaining review and permissions may be extensive, and a name change might take years to accomplish. Hundreds of name modifications are now pending before the Board. In conjunction with local community leaders, the newly formed Federal Advisory Committee will support a proactive and methodical formulation and examination of these recommendations.
The Board on Geographic Names, which was formed by Executive Order in 1890, is a federal organization tasked with ensuring that geographic names are used consistently throughout the federal government. It is made up of members from federal agencies that deal with geographic data, demographics, environment, and public land management. The Secretary of the Interior and the Board on Geographic Names were granted joint jurisdiction in 1947, and the Secretary of the Interior has ultimate approval or review of the Board’s decisions.
The Secretary of the Interior or the Board on Geographic Names have previously recognized derogatory names, which have been completely changed. Secretary Stewart Udall designated the N-word as disparaging in 1962, and asked the BGN to create a policy prohibiting its usage. The Board on Geographic Names declared a negative name for “Japanese” to be derogatory in 1974 and prohibited its usage.
Montana, Oregon, Maine, and Minnesota are among the states that have enacted laws restricting the use of the term “squaw” in place names. Derogatory names on geographic features on public property units are also the subject of legislation in both houses of Congress.
As an example:
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According to Deadline, Amazon Studios is close to finalizing a contract to make a Mass Effect series.
Neither Electronic Arts nor BioWare have made a series announcement. In addition, the story made no indication of who might star in the show or what the narrative may be. Recently, though, there have been a few bread crumbs strewn around.
Earlier in 2021, the project director for Mass Effect Legendary Edition said that a movie or TV program is “not a question of if, but when.” In February, actor Henry Cavill revealed a secret project on his Instagram account. The hazy picture was later identified as a print-out of the Wikipedia page for Mass Effect 3.
Even farther back, in 2010, Legendary Pictures bought the rights to a Mass Effect film. The arrangement, however, did not come to fruition.
The Mass Effect series, according to the article, is the consequence of Amazon doubling down on adaptations.
That’s because to The Wheel of Time’s apparent success. According to Deadline, the series had the best completion rate of any Amazon series when it first premiered. In addition, the program was the most popular on social media.
Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, did not provide any further information about viewership. She did say, though, that The Wheel of Time is “certainly trending to meet our high expectations.”
Then there’s the Emmy-nominated success of The Boys, a comic book adaptation. When you consider the pre-release buzz around the next The Lord of the Rings film, Amazon seems to be a big fan of adaptations right now.
Williams enjoys walking around the neighborhood with his wife and dog when he is not writing up news. It’s either that or a cup of hot chocolate. Or you could do both.
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PlayStation is being sued for allegedly discriminating against women.
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To some, the Spartans are the epitome of warriors: ferocious, courageous, liberty-loving, physically ripped superheroes. The very definition of raw and ready virility.
Others find the Spartans repulsive, seeing them as boorish, brutal, and one-dimensional proto-totalitarians. Owners of slaves, perpetrators of infanticide, and pederasts.
Neither perspective represents the intricacies — much alone the contradictory stories — of the ancient city-state of Lacedaemon.
Warriors of valor? The Spartan reputation for martial skill was undoubtedly well-deserved. However, the Spartan warrior did not battle in the manner we usually imagine — in single combat, for individual glory — but rather as part of a greater phalanx.
The Spartan man was also not a one-trick pony, relying entirely on his martial prowess and intellect. He was an aristocratic gentleman who had been educated not just in battle but also in music, singing, dancing, eloquence, logic, philosophy, and disciplined behavior. He was a literary fan of sports and poetry, as well as physical sparring and verbal sparring. Sphaerus, in contrast to the notion of a barren, aesthetically and intellectually austere civilization, said that “no one was more dedicated to music and singing.” Spartan dance and choral festivals drew guests from far and wide, and Socrates said that “Crete and Sparta are the most old and rich nurseries of philosophy among the Greeks.”
When it comes to slavery, infanticide, and pederasty, the evidence is mixed as to the precise nature and scope of these practices. The Messenians were conquered by the Spartans, but they were treated more like medieval serfs than slaves, with much more rights than those held in other regions of ancient Greece; as a result, thousands of slaves from Athens migrated to Sparta in search of better treatment. The Spartans are claimed to have slaughtered newborns judged unworthy to survive by exposing or tossing them down Mt. Taygetus, although no remains of children have been discovered there, and infanticide was not exclusive to Sparta; it was also done in Athens and other city-states. There are sources that attest to pederasty’s practice, but there are also sources that deny it, such as the account of Athenian historian Xenophon, who is the only source from that period with firsthand experience of the agoge (the Spartan system for training the young) and enrolled his own sons in this school. Whatever the extent of the ancient culture’s practices that we today find abhorrent, they can only be fully understood, if not justified, by the Spartans’ singular focus on creating an indestructible society of warriors, and the fact that much of the polis’ culture was structured around, and subordinated to, this goal.
Even ancient observers couldn’t tell if Sparta’s governance was more akin to a monarchy, democracy, or oligarchy. “Lacedaemon was, in truth, everything and none of the above,” writes Spartan expert Paul Rahe. To call the Spartan polis (and its neighbors) a state is to misunderstand it, since “there was no Greek state in antiquity.” As James Madison would later comment, the ancient Hellenic republic was “a true democracy… a society consisting of a limited number of individuals who meet and run the government in person.” The polis was, as the Greeks put it, “all about the men.”
We shouldn’t be shocked that there are different and often contradictory accounts of Sparta since the actual records of this people are far thinner and patchier than is commonly assumed. Much of what is known comes from sources that are biased in one direction or the other — from either champions or enemies of the city-state — and is limited in scope; the Spartans were a very secretive people who restricted citizen travel abroad and foreigner visitation at home (indeed, this secrecy is part of what made Sparta compelling in its own time, and continues to draw our interest today). “It would not be exaggeration to apply for Sparta Winston Churchill’s famous description of Russia: Lacedaemon was in antiquity and is today a conundrum wrapped in a mystery within an enigma,” Rahe remarks.
What we do know is that the Spartans had a genuinely distinctive way of life. “Classical Lacedaemon was no ordinary polis,” Rahe says. No one believed this in antiquity, and no one should believe it now.”
We also know that many of the city-contemporaries, state’s as well as many renowned observers throughout the years, were fervent fans of this unique way of life.
“To see at the temperance and orderliness, the facility and placidity, the magnanimity and discipline, the bravery and perseverance, and the toil-loving, success-loving, honor-loving attitude of the Spartans, you would deem yourself merely a kid,” Plato remarked of Lacedaemon’s culture.
Sparta was not the only ancient city that Plato admired from afar. Foreign visitors, including professors like Libanius and politicians like Cicero, came from all corners of civilization to see the famous agoge for themselves, and some, like Xenophon, even enrolled their own kids in the program and made large financial contributions.
Sparta was revered as a polis free of luxury and trade for centuries after its fall, as an example of the qualities of simplicity, accuracy, self-sacrifice, martial energy, mental fortitude, and physical endurance, and as an inspiration for a balanced, mixed government. The Founding Fathers were inspired by “the rule of military monks” while drafting the American constitution, while Samuel Adams wished for the new republic to become a “Christian Sparta.”
Even if these “Laconophiles” exaggerated the Spartan city-virtues, state’s it’s still worth studying what attracted their admiration. Even though the specifics of the Spartan way of life are often disputed or inflated, they nonetheless point to fundamental principles — ideals and lessons that we can’t and wouldn’t want to recreate precisely today, but that still provide insights into how to live our lives better. As Rahe points out:
“We may like the Athenians because they are more similar to ourselves, and we may be correct not only in that assessment but also in our moral and political inclinations.” Regardless of our preferences, we name sports teams after the Spartans, and we write novels and films about them (rather than the Athenians), which says a lot about the ancient Lacedaemonians and perhaps also something about the unsatisfied longings that lurk just beneath the surface in modern bourgeois societies.”
A city described by the Roman historian Livy as “memorable not for the magnificence of its buildings, but for its discipline”; defended by a “wall of men, instead of bricks” by the mythical founder of its military; and populated by those who claimed to be descendants of “Heracles the Unconquered” — a small warrior community that managed to command the respect of its neighbors and leave a legend for all time — undoubtedly has much to teach about the nature of
We’ll look at what lessons the ancient Spartans can teach contemporary males in the next three episodes.
Make sure to listen to our Sparta-themed episode with Paul Rahe:
The “Secretary Haaland Takes Action to Remove Derogatory Names from Federal Lands” is a news article that discusses the Indian Prime Minister’s decision to remove derogatory names from federal lands. Reference: indian prime ministers.
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