President Trump has directed that the highest peak in North America be stripped of its Athabascan Indian name, Denali, and again carry the name of our 25th president. It is an action of definition and political retribution.
A Trump executive order directs that within 30 days, Mt. Denali will become Mt. McKinley. President Obama bestowed the Denali name in 2015 at the behest of Alaska native groups and political leaders.
Murkowski refused to endorse Trump in 2016 or 2024, and voted to convict and remove him from office after the Trump-inspired January 6, 2022 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. She backed Nikki Haley for the GOP nomination last year. Trump came to Alaska in 2022 to campaign against Murkowski and ridicule her Senate performance. She won reelection by a narrow margin.
“President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent,” said Trump in announcing his action. “He was a natural businessman and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the.Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama.”
Murkowski sharply disagreed, even while applauding Trump for executive orders promoting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope.
“I strongly disagree with the president’s decision on Denali,” Murkowski posted on X, the former Twitter. “Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land from time immemorial.”
“Denali” is roughly translated as “the great one” or “the high one.” And that it is, capping the Alaska Range at 20,320 feet.
William McKinley never set foot in Alaska. He was elected president in 1896. A prospector named the mountain for America’s new president and the designation was codified in 1917. The Ohio congressional delegation would spend years fighting to keep the name. President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. He has been celebrated by Trump as a “champion of tariffs” and a “great but highly underestimated” president. McKinley, a champion of Manifest Destiny, was in office during the Spanish-American War.
Trump backer Elon Musk on X praised Trump for.the renaming of Denali as well as the president’s directing that the Gulf of Mexico be rechristened the Gulf of America. The renaming by Obama was, Trump alleged, “an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements and his sacrifice.”
Denali National Park and Preserve, which includes “the high one,” will keep its name. The original 1.7-million-acre Mt. McKinley National Park was renamed and more than tripled in size in the 1980 Alaska Lands Act. Alaska politicians had rare words of praise for Obama’s action and tried to talk Trump out of restoring the McKinley moniker during his first term.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is married to an Athabascan native and defended Denali at a 2017 meeting in the White House. As related in The Anchorage Daily News, Sullivan told Trump: “If you change the name back now, she (his wife) is going to be really really mad. So he’s like, ‘All right, we won’t do that.’”
Trump did it. The Daily News reported that it could not reach Sullivan or Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy for comment. Dunleavy is a Trump toady. In 2022, Trump told Dunleavy he would endorse the governor’s reelection, but only if Dunleavy did not support Murkowski.
The Alaska Federation of Natives honored Murkowski last year for her “love and dedication” to the state, her service to Alaska Native people, and her work on public-lands issues. The AFN honored her with its annual Denali Award.
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
