Ramsey County Board weighs possible name change for Savage Lake in Little Canada
Once again, public officials in Minnesota are considering changing the name of a lake which includes a derogatory term used to describe Native Americans.
The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing on Tuesday morning on the proposal to rename Savage Lake in Little Canada. The lake is two bodies of water, split by I-35E as it runs between St. Paul and I-694.
The Little Canada Historical Society submitted the petition last year to rename the lake Lake Metis. Metis means “mixed” in French.
The proposed new name reflects the area’s history.
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Curt Loschy, head of the society, said back in the 1830s French Canadian fur traders and Native Americans set up their summer camp on the east side of Savage Lake.
Initially, it was known as “Lac au Sauvages” which means “wild lake” in French. In the late 1800s, when English became the dominant language, the body of water was known as Savage Lake.
“I’ve never liked the name of savage,” said Rockne Waite, a member of the Little Canada Historical Society. He has been spearheading the effort since he made his first phone call to the public works department in 2010 to find out how the name could be changed.
Waite says he attended city council meetings trying to get the lake changed.
“And nobody knew how to change the lake names at the time,” he said.
Waite, who is of Choctaw and Chickasaw ancestry and originally from San Bernardino, Calif., has lived in Little Canada since 1974.
Waite eventually connected with Pete Boulay, a climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Boulay also works in the geographic names section of the DNR.
The process to change a geographical feature like a lake, creek, island or mountain begins with a petition. It must have signatures from at least 15 registered voters in the county where the name change is to take place. Boulay recommends getting 25 signatures, just in case any are ruled out.
From beginning to end, the name change paperwork has to go back and forth a couple of times from county to state and finally to the U.S. Board on Geographical Names. If the U.S. board votes to approve the name change, then the name change process is complete.
If that sounds like bureaucracy on steroids, Boulay said there’s a good reason for it.
He said he wants the name to “stick” and not have to be revisited again.
“And I also want to build a good enough case where the U.S. Board on Geographic Names would accept the name,” he said.
Only one name has been rejected by the board and that was in 1994, before Boulay began in his position.
Loschy said this is not the first request for a lake name change in Minnesota.
“The reality is, this whole name change thing, there’s been a lot of name changes to Minnesota lakes that have been insulting to the Native Americans.”
According to the DNR there have been 121 name changes to geographical features in the state since 1991.
Seventy-one of them have been lake changes. Twenty geographical features originally named after a slur used against Native American women have had their names changed.
Eight of them were lakes. One lake in Washington County was changed from Halfbreed to Lake Keewahtin.
A high-profile name change in Minneapolis led to a lawsuit against the DNR. The agency approved the name change of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska in 2018.
If Lake Metis is approved, Boulay says it will not only be the first Lake Metis in Minnesota, but it will also be the first in the nation.