Dakota?

I can’t take credit for it this time around, but about 40 years ago I was up to my eyeballs in a somewhat lighthearted, somewhat serious, attempt to change the name of our state to Dakota. Just Dakota. No North.

This time around the credit goes to my friend Sarah Vogel, who sent an e-mail yesterday morning to some friends of hers, with a copy to me, quoting some words from columnist Heather Cox Richardson that said, “Later this afternoon, in what seemed to be an attempt to bully Canada—although Canadians and Americans both have made it very clear that strategy is backfiring—Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to change the name of Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ in official U.S. government documents and communications, as well as the Geographic Names Information System.”

And Sarah went on, with her tongue planted firmly in her cheek, “While he is busy changing names, he may as well delete ‘North’ from ‘North Dakota’ as Jim Fuglie recommended years ago.”  

Well. Indeed. WTF? Why not, Sarah? It’s only been about 40 years since we tried that.

What Sarah didn’t mention is that Doug might be really receptive to that. Because about 25 years ago he was quoted in The New Yorker magazine saying, when asked by their writer how he felt about changing the state’s name to Dakota, “No state has ever changed its name. It appeals to me for that reason alone–it’s never been done before. One definition of an adventure is an uncertain outcome. Why not just do it for ourselves?”

Well Burgum and his boss certainly know something about adventures with “uncertain outcomes.” Seems like they’re almost a daily occurrence for them.

A little background for those of you who are new to North Dakota . . . er, Dakota. Way back in 1989, my friend State Senator Tim Mathern introduced a legislative resolution proposing that the voters of North Dakota should vote on changing our state’s constitution to change the name of our state to Dakota. The idea got a favorable recommendation from the Legislature’s Joint Constitutional Revisions Committee and went to the floor of the North Dakota Senate. But the majority of the Senators said “Nope.” So we never voted on it.

I was the state Tourism Director at the time, and championed the idea in the Legislature and the news media, so my name became the one most prominently associated with the idea. And don’t get me wrong. I thought it was a great idea, and I still do.

But then, a dozen or so years later, the state chamber of commerce put together something called the New Economy Initiative and a committee tasked with bold ideas, led by another friend of mine, Katherine Satrom, revived the idea. Doug Burgum, then a businessman with no signal that he might become a politician, joined up with Katherine and convened some focus groups to get a sense of the public’s feelings about the idea. The “public” didn’t like it. Not long after that, the idea faded away again.

But by that time, Burgum was on the record. Oh, well, he’s on the record on a lot of things these days, as Interior Secretary. Like buying Greenland, or selling off the National Forests and National Grasslands to the timber and oil industries. And blaming vandals for tearing up the Reflecting Pool. Y’know, some of those things almost make changing the name of a state sound reasonable.

Except that he doesn’t have the power to do it. North Dakotans would have to do that, at the ballot box, by changing our constitution.

So, thanks, Sarah, for the encouragement. But I’m too old to take on that battle again. That’s a heavy lift for an old fellow with a bad back.

But, Y’know, Doug Burgum was all fired up about this once. Maybe he’d take it on again. Maybe the president would give him a leave of absence to come home and lead the charge. And then maybe he’d never, ever, go back to Washington. D.C. again. That would be the best thing for a fellow who once had a lot of credibility for doing some good things back here in North Dakota. Credibility he’s now spent defending that fat asshole he works for.

Come home, Doug. You can still do some good things here in Dakota. Sarah and Katherine and I will help. Maybe Tim, too. He’s still a State Senator.