(gentle music) - [Amber] We have lots of tribes in this area that speak our ancestral language, Lushootseed.

When we go to the mountains, we're listening for Lushootseed.

You can absolutely hear it everywhere.

You can hear the animals speaking Lushootseed.

You can hear the water speaking Lushootseed.

The word for river is... (speaking Lushootseed) So when you're listening to the river, it's... (speaking Lushootseed) You hear the birds.

(speaking Lushootseed) There's other birds that say... (speaking Lushootseed) It's in the land.

Lushootseed is from the land.

So that's why it's very important that our names carry on each of those locations.

I think renaming the mountain is one step toward some sort of solidarity and acknowledgement toward the indigenous people that live in Washington state.

When the name is Mount Rainier, it still has a lot of power to us because we reference the mountain how we want to.

In English, it's this.

This is this one thing and this one word, and that's what we're going to call it.

In our language, we have multiple ways to say one thing.

For the Puyallup dialect, I've heard our people say it three different ways within our own language, within our own tribe.

- How we even got the name Rainier is quite interesting.

Rainier was an Admiral in the British Navy in the 1790s, around the same time as the American revolution.

And so you have Vancouver arrive, sees this beautiful mountain, and names it after his best friend.

You think about staking a claim on something that's not yours, coming in and putting his name on it is disrespectful, but it also shows a lack of connection that you have with the environment that you live in.

My pet peeve has not been so much what's in the name, but their objection to why not change the name.

And usually it's due to their attachment to a label.

We have Rainier Beer, we have the Tacoma Rainiers, we have this icon, so why change it?

We're not rewriting the history here.

We're reclaiming the history.

- [Chay] Changing Mount Rainier to its original name, Taquoma, or some people say Taquobud, it's how we honor the first people of this land.

It's more than a name change.

It's about recognition, acknowledging, internalizing, being accountable, reciprocating.

We know what our elders went through and what our ancestors went through.

And we all have intergenerational trauma and it does hurt trying to get past that.

The elders in boarding schools, they were not allowed to use their language.

And a lot of elders wouldn't teach it because they thought it was bad.

It was ingrained into them that it's a bad thing and it shouldn't be carried on.

- [Brandon] If we change the name, I think we begin the process of saying, "Hey, you failed.

"We never ceased to exist.

"Even at your best efforts, we survived, we endured.

"We stand here today, strong."

- [Amber] In Christianity, there's reference to going to mountains and it's sacred, and you're going to the mountains to pray.

You're going to the mountains to hear God's voice.

It's the same for us.

And so I think people have this disconnect and not understanding that mountains are sacred spaces.

- [Chay] I've been on the Nisqually Parks Commission since I was 18.

There's other meetings I've went to where the speakers would get up and say, "This land is our playground."

And I'm just like, it's not, it's not a playground.

If they just had a little bit more education on the land they're on, then maybe they'd respect it a little more.

That's why it's important to get our identity out there and tell our story.

- [Hanford] Taquoma, don't forget the water.

We would hear stories also that come from the Olympics, and over there in that side of the mountain ridge, where Taquoma came from.

- These mountains, Olympic range, people at one time, way back in two or 3 million years ago, this mountain up here got crowded out, and then, she had to move out.

And when she was leaving, she told her son, "Taquoma, "and don't forget the water, take it along with us."

And that's why all the rivers run now into that mountain.

The boy didn't forget the water, see.

He took it along with him.

And that's how the rivers come on that mountain.

Taquoma.

- These names go back thousands of years.

And that meaning is so strong that when you say it, you can feel that presence of the name.

Don't forget the water.

It is a treaty right of ours to gather and hunt in our usual and accustomed fishing stations, villages, you know, and that's in the treaty.

(gentle music) And I have been fighting for the last 25 years to get rights to actually gather the bark and the grass and the teas and the roots.

And so to look at Mount Rainier, how they've taken it and turned it into this recreational setting, our history was literally wiped off this area.

And to have it come back as strong as it is now, it helps the next generation and the generation after that realize who they are.

(speaking Lushootseed) - [Amber] If we're going to change the name of Mount Rainier to the native name, we need to start with those local tribes and everybody that referenced the mountain.

I feel it is our obligation to share our own story in our own words.

Renaming the mountain with an ancestral native name, it shows our children that there's no limits to how far Lushootseed can go.

There's no limits to how far ancestral language could go.

(speaking Lushootseed) I did not grow up speaking Lushootseed.

I'm an adult learner of my language.

My three children get to live in a world where they didn't know that Lushootseed didn't exist.

So the world that they have been born into, all they have heard is Lushootseed.

I would love for my kids to not remember that it was called Mount Rainier, for them not to have to code switch, and go back and forth, depending on who they're talking to, to live in a world where that has always been the name for them, because that's the name that we use for the mountain.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Port of Seattle.