Federal panel member hopes to help change derogatory place names, like a Malverne school and street

From a distance, it was hard not to applaud the efforts of Malverne High School students, who successfully led a movement to rename a street that honored a village settler who was also a leader of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter.

Lindner Place was named for Paul Lindner, a farmer who historians say led cross burnings and marches for the white supremacist KKK in the 1920s. In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by police, the students petitioned the village board for a more racially inclusive name for the street, which sits next to a school once named after Lindner.

Like the former Lindner Place Elementary School, now the Maurice W. Downing Primary School, the street has been renamed. What began as a student inclusivity project has changed the landscape of Malverne.

That it took since April for a consensus to develop on a new street name — Acorn Place — illustrates the complexities of inclusivity. As a member of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s new Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, I am tasked to work with the committee and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to identify federal lands with derogatory names. When meetings begin later this year, the committee is expected to engage with the public and Haaland to solicit and assist with proposals to change such names.

This committee is restricted to reviewing the names of federal properties. Debate over seemingly derogatory names has simmered for years; the committee is a step toward accelerating the process of reassessment, which previously had been done on a case-by-case basis.

Even before the announcement of the committee members in August, Haaland, the first American Indian cabinet secretary, identified the word ‘squaw’ as sexist and derogatory to the American Indian community and took action to remove the word from nearly 650 geographic features across the country.

The Department of the Interior has received more than 1,000 recommendations for new names for those 650 locations. Nearly 70 tribal governments participated in consultations that yielded another several hundred recommendations. The new names chosen went into use immediately.

Haaland was right when she said, "Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage.” Our national commitment to inclusivity and diversity is embedded in whom we are as Americans.

My 16 colleagues come from backgrounds as diverse as the United States itself. They include one member of a Native Hawaiian organization, one member of a Native American tribal organization, four members of a Native American tribe, scholars, civil rights authorities, experts in anthropology and cultural studies, and more.

It is no surprise that students led the call for change in Malverne. Young people remain among the most spirited elements of our population, confident in their conviction that activism in pursuit of a universal truth is the most American of values.

As I begin this appointment, I am confident the great experiment chartered in 1776 to bring together people from across the world to “form a more perfect union” will be a fulfillment of the ideals of our founding. The outcome of this committee will prove that we are more perfect as a union than we are siloed. I am proud to be a part of the American ideal and dream.