The road to renaming Sitka’s Baranof Elementary School has been rough in places, but a 19-member committee has spent the last few months narrowing the choices to five. They were presented to the Sitka School Board on Wednesday night (2-7-24)
The top five picks are all strong prospects for renaming Sitka’s K-1 elementary school, and consistent with the successful strategy for renaming Sitka’s 2-5 building over twenty years ago from Verstovia Elementary to Keet Gooshi Heen, or “killer whale stream.”
Of the five choices, the runaway favorite, based on community surveys, is…
“Xóots Elementary School,” as spoken by a child who might attend the school.
About 53-percent of Sitkans surveyed favored Xóots Elementary – that’s 303 votes out of 577 total responses. Xóots is pronounced with a raspy “h” sound, and written in Lingít orthography with the letter “x.”
It means “brown bear.”
Of the other four possibilities, only two brought in over 10-percent of the votes. They are:
“Gat.Héeni Elementary School,”
which means “sockeye stream,” and
“Shee Yátxʼi Elementary School,”
Which means “Children of Shee.” Shee being the original name of what is now called Baranof Island.
Arriving at just five choices was no simple matter. The renaming committee initially canvassed the community and received over 400 suggestions in its first survey. Of those suggestions, the committee excluded any that included someone’s name – which had derailed the renaming process a couple of years ago. That, and other exclusions left 268 possibilities, of which each committee member ranked their top twenty. Those choices were then winnowed down to the five possibilities that were sent out in a second online survey, which also had audio of the pronunciations.
Former school board president Blossom Teal-Olsen served on the committee as a member of the public. She told current board members that the project was always about more than simply choosing a name.
“At the beginning of this whole process, our main point as a committee coming together was healing,” said Teal-Olsen. “Healing and moving forward, and making sure that our actions really uplifted our community and allowed for learning the Lingít language as well as learning about our community and the land that we live on.”
The healing is really twofold: Teal-Olsen touched on the generational trauma of indigenous people and people of color which the renaming process was meant to address, and she also mentioned healing from divisions that emerged three years ago during the first iteration of the renaming process, when proposals to rename the school for distinguished elders generated some unanticipated acrimony.
Teal-Olsen said this led the committee to stay with cultural conventions.
“We did stick to the traditional ways of naming buildings, places” she said. “Again, when this process was even brought up, we did have a hiccup before so we readily acknowledged that and learned from that experience. And again, that became part of our foundation of moving forward, learning from our mistakes and making sure that we in our actions highlighted the traditional ways of the Lingít people who have been here since time immemorial.”
Teal-Olsen said that she enjoyed the public engagement built into the process, the time sitting at a table at SeaMart, going to bingo nights, and parent-teacher conferences. She thanked the Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s Social Services and Education Departments for helping to get the word out, and for making sure tribal elders could participate in the surveys.
Board president Tristan Guevin said thanks should also go to Teal-Olsen, for riding out what turned out to be a very challenging process.
“Lastly I wanted to recognize and thank you, Blossom, for all of the work and leadership you’ve shown,” said Guevin. “This idea started years ago, back when you were on the school board and prior to COVID. And just really appreciate you keeping this going and all the work that you personally have put into this, and I think that is worthy of recognition.”
The board will make a final decision on the renaming of Baranof Elementary School at its regular meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 7 in the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi community house. Teal-Olsen said there is a family barbecue to celebrate the school’s new name planned for May.
