The Clark County School Board is considering renaming Kit Carson Elementary School International Academy because of Carson’s role in the death of hundreds of Native Americans during the colonization of the West.
Carson led the Long Walk of the Navajo in 1864, forcing Navajo people to march from their land in modern-day Arizona to New Mexico in the middle of winter.
At least 200 Navajo people died of starvation and exposure during the forced marches.
School Board member Linda Young proposed the resolution to rename the northeast valley school, which was originally named in 1956.
Young wants to see the school renamed for Helen Anderson Toland, a former principal at Kit Carson and the first African American woman to serve as a principal in the School District.
The board will discuss the proposal and possibly vote on it Thursday.
William Bauer, a professor of Native American history at UNLV, said the traumatic episode is one the Navajo people remember in their history and oral tradition.
“There are stories of soldiers killing women, children and the elderly seared into their national memory,” he said.
When Carson traveled across the American West, his party of colonizers also passed through Las Vegas, killing Paiute people along the Old Spanish Trail, a historic trade route that stretched from New Mexico to California. The trail passed through Utah and Southern Nevada.
Bauer said memorializing early settlers by placing their names on public buildings romanticizes the westward expansion of the U.S.
“If we look at the events from a perspective of indigenous people, we have a better and clearer understanding of the processes of westward expansion, which involved ethnic cleansing and genocide,” he said.
Clark County is not the only place where officials are considering removing Carson’s name from a public building.
In July, a state lawmaker in New Mexico proposed stripping Carson’s name from an elementary school in Albuquerque.