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Stevens Elementary has stood on Capitol Hill since 1906 (Image: Seattle Public Schools)
By Elizabeth Turnbull
As Washington slowly wipes away racist place names and removes the names of pioneers and figures dishonored by the revelations of history, an elementary school on Capitol Hill has started the process of renaming and shifting away from a tainted legacy. It has also received a gift to help it on its way.
Last week, families of Stevens Elementary and members of the school’s Racial Equity Committee met to lay out the steps to get closer to this goal.
“In my family, the name change topic has been a conversation for about 22 years,” said Michelle Martine, a teacher at Stevens Elementary and a member of the school’s Racial Equity Committee.
While Thursday’s meeting was held to field ideas and not to make final decisions, most of those speaking were in favor of the name change and several ideas were exchanged on what new paths the 18th Ave E school could take.
As part of the name change process, Cecile Hansen, the Duwamish Tribal Chair, gifted the name Princess Angeline to the school, according to members of the Equity Committee.
Princess Angeline was the oldest daughter of Chief Seattle, born around 1828.
Princess Angeline — Kikisoblu — in 1895, a year before her death at age 76 (Image: UW Special Collections — Edward S. Curtis)
While the name “Princess Angeline” was given to her by a pioneer woman when she was born, she was originally named Kikisoblu, according to historians. At Thursday’s meeting there was some confusion as to whether or not the gifted name was Kikisoblu or Princess Angeline.
After her death she was buried in Lake View Cemetery which is less than a ten minute walk away from Steven’s Elementary School.
Like Princess Angeline, Isaac Ingalls Stevens is an important character in the stories of Seattle’s history. Unlike Angeline, Stevens is buried in a cemetery in Rhode Island along with baggage from his controversial past as a military and governmental leader and an extension of white Americans colonial presence in the country.
Stevens managed to attain various high positions in the U.S. government including governor of the “territory of Washington,” and a posthumous promotion to Major General in the Civil War after his efforts as part of the Union Army.
During his relatively brief life, from 1818 to 1862, Stevens was also responsible for violently coercing Native People into signing treaties that gave away a large portion of land and rights to the government. Such violence included fighting a war against the Yakama Nation and executing leaders of other Native Peoples. In doing so, Stevens paved the way for white people to colonize more land.
42 years after Stevens’ death, Seattle purchased the land for a school and two years later, named their new building in Stevens’ honor. Today, more than 110 years later, the name could also be history. Currently, the Racial Equity Committee’s goal is to have it changed by this fall.
Until then, official plans for a new name are still being worked out and some people present at Thursday’s meeting fielded alternative ideas, like naming the school after a place or Bruce Lee, who is also buried in Lake View.
Seattle Schools also has a goal to select a “LGBTQI+ hero” to honor with a school name change that has, so far, gone unmet.
Before fall, the Equity Team plans on gathering community input some time during May and to form a student group, among other things.
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Oh pleeeze – stop pandering to natives. A tribal representative is in no more position to “gift” the name of a now deceased person, than an Irish American can “gift” John Kennedy, or a Jew can “gift” Einstein. Princess Angeline’s name is not owned by anyone. If the district wishes her name, they can use it.
Stop deifying Natives. They are as human and imperfect as anyone else. Look up “Native American Slave Ownership” in Wikipedia and have at it. A brief note in the article states “Intra-indigenous slavery also occurred in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska”, where it persisted until the late 19th century.” Does that disqualify a native name – since they owned slaves? Just asking.
Northwest Natives sell us gambling and cheap cigarettes on lands that conveniently abut Interstates. They fish when and where they wish, gillnetting the mouths of Northwest rivers and even in front of the locks on occasion, catching anything that swims, with little actual regard to sustainability. They do far more than subsistence with their fishing rights that treaties have given them, on state of the art boats, with plenty of crew including non-natives. They suffer greatly in some places due to learned dependency on the government. Those who have moved on from reservations and integrate in society have fared by and large much better. Don’t buy into the romantic notions of native virtue.
I could care less about Isaac Stevens. He was a man of his time I suppose, paving the way of manifest-destiny and our presence here. Are any of us readers ready to leave the area and perhaps slit our wrists for good measure, since there is no place on earth that we have a “right” to be if there was not some element of conquering and displacement? Read history.
Such renaming is performative at best and does not require that any of us give up the land the school is on, or repudiate us white folks living in the Northwest or in the US. It costs nothing but feels Oh So Good to have engaged in this mindless claim of equity. It means nothing other than one more pious lesson that can be taught to the kids about why they should feel bad and the evils of history.
“…renaming is performative at best…” What exactly do you think naming it Stevens School was? Naming is an honor and it makes a statement. Now, we are honoring someone new. And, yes, it is a performative gesture, one that is meant to convey respect and goodwill. Take a pill and relax. No one is being harmed here.
Psst, inconvenient truths: Princess Angeline, as the daughter of Chief Seattle, hailed from a family of slaveowners that carried out brutal slave raids on neighboring tribes, a practice that long predated the White settlers’ arrival, and one of Stevens’ treaty demands was the abolition of slavery in the Northwest Territories. So, today’s exercise in virtue signaling changes a school’s name from that of a White abolitionist to honor a war-mongering, slaveholding family. Cool, at least until it becomes uncool, which it will in time.
History is messy and there are no all-good or all-bad historical figures. It’s dismaying to see sanctimonious Seattle liberals behave in exactly the same way as the conservatives they deride. To wit, the overt bias of this blog post.
“History is messy and there are no all-good or all-bad historical figures.” In that case, what’s your problem with renaming the school for a figure who is neither all-good or all-bad?
Yes, “history is messy” and, yes, in time we might decide that someone else besides Angeline is deserved of having their name on a school. Is that so bad? It’s called evolution of thought. To me, making an effort to evolve, stay relevant, and engage with the zeitgeist is more interesting than stubbornly never changing. As long as we’re alive, we might as well make an effort, rather than dig our heels in and resist change.
Beyond the one-sided narrative motivating the change, and the general hassle and confusion it will cause, I don’t much care about the name of the school. See above where I said “Cool”.
To avoid offending anyone at any point in time, I suggest numbering the schools. Although using the Arabic numerical system raises problematic concerns over past atrocities and domination…
This is not about resisting change. Rather it is speaking to the claimed rationale of renaming a school for a more “pure” person, who coincidentally happens to be native, in this time of extraordinary deference to Native Americans. And we should be careful about revisions of history and renaming things. It is one thing to take away the name of the Sackler’s who donated a lot to various institutions who named buildings after them – after learning of the murderous impact of their wealth source (Oxycontin). Quite another to erase the name of a man of his times who I do not know enough about to be more nuanced. Lyndon Johnson both promoted desegregation as well as the Vietnam war. Does he get erased for excesses of the latter? What of those in power who interred Japanese Americans. It was FDR who signed the order. Should we erase him based upon this regrettable (in hindsight) act? The list goes on. And as pointed out above, natives were and are far from pure in act and deed. Erasure is dangerous, as we can see today with denial of truth to a hundred plus million Russians, by their government.
I think you’re missing the point a little bit. Apart from all the conversation about rights and wrongs in history (which I will stay away from, I don’t know enough about any of it at this point), what are we trying to achieve with this renaming exercise (which I dare say is little more than tokenism)? Why not take all the money this whole pomp and circumstance costs and stick it in an education or healthcare fund for instance … healthy and educated people will help evolve the zeitgeist. Sticking a new name on a building will not.
This is a great post and really speaks to some of the idiocy surrounding renaming in Washington and elsewhere.
Stevens is by no means someone we should be honoring by affixing his name to a public elementary school, but the same is true for some alternate native individual.
Specifically, the idea that native peoples are completely unproblematic in any way is an age-old racist trope ranging from the disgusting idea of the “ecologically noble savage,” where native peoples are conceptualized as living in concert with the natural world as a genteel way of saying “they’re just like animals,” and, more to the point here, that native peoples are morally “clean” in a way these cultures were not. Slaving was a part of native Northwest cultures, and this is a stain that shouldn’t be hidden.
In places like South Africa, where there has understandably been a lot of renaming in the last 30 years, a preference for geography-based new names has surfaced.
My view is that, yes, the name should change, but perhaps the best name is geography based rather than a name honoring an individual?
Angeline is a fine person to honor – she was resilient, a survivor. Angeline saw her people overwhelmed by colonists, militarily defeated, way of life destroyed, run off their land, and for a time banned from the city built where they had lived for millennia. She had a hard life but she made her way:
From: Elementary Level: Princess Angeline, Daughter of Chief Seattle – HistoryLink.org
“Angeline lived in a small shack on the downtown waterfront. Her new friends wanted to help make her life more comfortable, but Angeline wanted to take care of herself. She washed their laundry so that she could earn her own living. She also sold handmade baskets from her home.
There were very few official birth records for early native people but historians have estimated that Angeline was born around 1828.”
“When Angeline died in 1896, she was buried in Lake View Cemetery next to her friend, pioneer Henry Yesler. Her coffin was built in the shape of a canoe. After many years had passed, Seattle school children raised money for a special stone for her grave marker. There is a plaque attached to the stone that describes Angeline and her friendship with the early settlers to this region.”
The revelations of history will besmirch us all given time. If we want to spend precious time renaming institutions, fine, but perhaps we should make it more of a positive change rather than condemning those who came before for their failings. And don’t spend too much energy on any of it, because Seattle Public Schools has huge problems with administration and leadership, none of which will be solved by renaming schools.
Keep the name Stevens but have the school named after Ray Stevens, Jeremy Stevens, Cat Stevens, or Ted Stevens. After all King County is named for Rodney King, Burger King, Carole King, and/or Larry King.
We should take a lesson from San Francisco, where several schools were renamed. They are now having serious regrets for doing this.