Only nine days after his inauguration, President Donald J. Trump signed 26 executive orders, including Order 14172, titled, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” This order has undone former President Barack Obama’s efforts dedicating an Alaskan mountain to indigenous peopl ne 2015,
This order impacted the names of many notable natural landmarks in America, such as Mount Denali, formerly dedicated to indigenous people native to Alaska and currently renamed Mount McKinley to honor the former president.
This was a spit in the face of the Alaskan government and the native people of Alaska, as the mountain had been called Mount Denali for centuries. Another one of the absurd things that Trump’s order has done is dubbing the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America.’ This order is, in general, is asinine. It completely changed things that were completely irrelevant compared to the other problems going on around the world, which Trump is trying to solve.
The Gulf of Mexico has been referred to as such since rhe late 1500s, and the only entities that have acknowledged the name change are American navigation services such as Apple Maps and Google Maps. Even then, only United States Google users can see this change. No one can seem to wrap their heads around why he’s made these changes. Is it for shock value or something else entirely?
The action adds to a greater portfolio of Trump’s aggressive actions against Mexico, especially with his 2016 campaign to build a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. However, his previous threats towards the construction of the wall was to combat rising illegal immigration rates. The name change to the Gulf of America doesn’t have any political backing in the way the wall did besides gaining support by fellow conservative politicians.
When asked about Trump renaming the gulf, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, shared her beliefs that the name change wouldn’t be used in Mexico or anywhere else in the world. It frankly seems a little redundant to force these changes on only the people in America because no other country officially recognized the change. In my opinion, Trump had absolutely zero authority to do this, but what’s even more disquieting is that he thinks he does. And the U.S. has less coastline on the Gulf than Mexico does. So if anyone has the authority to change the name of the gulf, it would be Mexico, not the U.S.
A solution to either of these name changes probably won’t arise until 2029, after Trump’s second term, because I seriously doubt that he will change his mind when it comes to the name of the mountain or the gulf. Whether it’s a matter of opinion or pride, I believe we will be stuck with the names Mount McKinley and The Gulf of America for the next four years.
I do not agree with this motion at all and think it should be undone immediately. This order is an offense to all the Native people of the state of Alaska and the people of Mexico. No one seemed to care about the titles of the two geographical landmarks or their significance, and most people were entirely content before Trump changed them. What’s bothersome is that no one is really noticing this. Some people are sharing their commentary on social media platforms, but many just don’t care. This is a relatively irrelevant issue, but if people in power believe that they can just rename culturally significant landmarks what else will they think they have the power to do?
