Rob: For a long time in the Canmore view shed. there’s been this mountain that looks like it has a nipple on top and it’s had a name that’s both racialist and misogynistic. It’s just a nickname, but when we’ve been looking for alternative, people have been like, well, it’s kind of a sub-peak of Mount Charles Stewart. It hasn’t really had a good, official name that we can say, “no, it’s not this, it’s this”, but now it does!

Tanya: Thanks to a cooperation between the Whyte Museum and the Chiniki First Nation of the Stoney Nakoda, the traditional name for the ridge on that peak has been restored. Anû Kathâ Îpa, Which translates into English as Bald Eagle Peak.

Rob: It kind of looks like a Bald Eagle. I can see that.

Tanya: Right? Like the top of the head. That’s what that is. You’re right, Rob. The whole point is in order to get people to stop using the offensive name, having an actual name that is appropriate is a really great solution. We have been kind of stuck in this limbo of knowing that something better has to be done, but waiting for the bureaucracy of the provincial government to get around to doing this has taken a long time, so having this name restored through ceremony with the Stoney Nakoda Elders is a really powerful thing. Now we have a name that we can take that to the province.

Rob: So there is still some bureaucracy here. I mean, legally there still needs to be a designation, but we can start calling it that now.

Tanya: Bald Eagle Peak. Here we go.

Rob: There’s probably still a segment of the community that’s going to say, I’m still going to call it what I called it before, what I’ve always known it as. It’s the same segment that was insisting on continuing to call it Chinaman’s Peak after it was renamed Ha Ling Peak, and I have to wonder why. I mean, why are you hanging on to this? There’s no historical significance. It’s not even an official name. It’s just something that somebody made up, some horrible thing a long time ago, and it’s just been perpetuated ever since. Why do we have to hang onto something that is offensive just because that’s how we’ve always known it?

Tanya: It’s a weak argument too, because the name from the Stoney Nakoda has more historic relevance than anything the climbing community calls that ridge.

Filed under: Canmore, Mountain Insider