Names have power.
As seventh grader Varun Shankar can tell you, his school, Miles Exploratory Learning Center, is built on Indigenous land.
This semester, Varun and his honors social studies class investigated this history.
And after a research project taught them more about the past and the school’s namesake, it led them to a bold solution: Give Miles, a school known for integrating deaf and hard of hearing students and Sam Hughes Elementary, new names honoring the culture and people who helped others.
Black Coyote, the proposed Miles name, was a deaf Lakota Warrior. Sam Hughes’ new moniker, Góshé Whitman, is named after an Apache word for dog and a person who aided the Apache people.
Grasping the controversial narratives of two Tucson namesakes propelled the students to appear before the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board. There, they presented their projects and raised the idea of changing the names.
“Names have power,” said Varun. “Everyone in the entire middle school did one of these projects and they all have to find a way to share it with the community, make it relevant to our community.”
For the nine-week unit at 104-year-old Miles, some students chose Arizona town names, streets, cemeteries, buildings or parks to research and figure out the why behind the name, said teacher Patrick Kelly.
The projects aim to sharpen students’ critical thinking skills and find their voice. The unit looked at Southern Arizona and Sonoran history in the mid-19th century — the Mexican-American War through the 1880s and focused on the relationship between the Mexican community, the Tohono O’odham, and the Apache people and white settlers.
“What is not included is what perspective history is told from,” Kelly said. “For the project part, the kids chose their own place to do a history of the name, then propose some change” based on research.
Varun and his project partner Maya McLeod researched, interviewed class speakers and discussed Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles, while Georgia Stebe and partner Charlotte Walbank did the same for Sam Hughes. What they found led them to question the school names and propose new ones to the Governing Board based on the schools’ history and culture.
“We were looking at the history of names, remembering the history of the land that we’re on — good and bad. The negative aspects of history are quite often just cut out by those who write history,” said eighth-grader Charlotte. “It’s important to look at all perspectives and just really think about how some of that history is translated to everyday life even if you don’t really realize it.”
The students made their case at a Governing Board meeting last month. They were surprised and encouraged when a board member asked that their idea be placed on a future agenda for discussion.
Reexamining history
Miles school opened in 1921 and is named after the Army general originally from Massachusetts. He led Union forces throughout the Civil War and later fought against many Indigenous tribes. Some credit him for capturing Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, but this is not confirmed.
The school just south of the University of Arizona, currently has a dual-language program including American Sign Language and about 40 deaf and hard of hearing students are integrated into general classrooms in kindergarten through eighth grade where the enrollment is 285.
Sam Hughes School, 700 N. Wilson Ave., opened in 1927 and has about 360 students in kindergarten though fifth grade. It is named after Hughes, a merchant, politician, school organizer and banker who was originally from Wales. The students’ research showed at about age 30, Hughes married 12-year-old Atanacia Santa Cruz. He also helped to fund the Camp Grant Massacre in 1871, where more than 100 Apache — mostly women, children, and elders — were slaughtered and 30 Apache children were enslaved.
“How do we honor people and what if they are dishonorable?” Tucson historian Ken Scoville, 74, asks. It’s likely Hughes pitched in money to fund the Camp Grant attack and then rounded up all the guns and weapons and loaded them into his wagon, he said. And, he added, the spotlight on Miles is dimmed because he “took credit for capturing Geronimo” but it was likely his subordinates.
The students’ research led to more questions and a sense of urgency.
“The more we found out about (Sam Hughes), the more we had to do our project,” Charlotte said. “It was like ‘this is a really serious issue and we need to do something about this.’ ”
Taking action
As the student-led projects began to develop, presenting the findings came into focus. Teacher Patrick Kelly asked the students about speaking during the “Call to the Audience” portion of the board meeting.
That was where Miles principal Andrea Steele learned from her students.
“As a person who is not native to this area, anytime someone shares some Tucson history, it’s all new for me,” Steele said. “I appreciated the research and the time they put in. Patrick allows for the research and lets students take it where they need to go.”
But speaking for three minutes in front of the school board?
“At first, we were all so ‘absolutely not,’ ” said Maya, a seventh grader. “Are you crazy?
“We normally just present projects to the Miles community, younger students, parents. … This is higher-level,” she said. “I have been told I have good presentation skills and I was hoping that would translate to the board.”
TUSD board member Sadie Shaw says it did. She asked the item be placed on a future agenda.
“I didn’t have any idea about the history about (Gen.) Miles. I knew a bit about Sam Hughes,” Shaw said. “I think the issue should be addressed publicly. This is just a starting point for people self-determining what should be named after schools, buildings, streets.”
The discussion makes sense, Shaw said, because “we didn’t originally understand the history of a person or event.” Shaw has experience in this area, as she advocated for renaming Doris J. Thompson Park (formerly Mansfield Park) north of downtown.
But renaming could be problematic, said Sam Hughes neighborhood association president Gayle Hartmann, also an archaeologist, historian and conservationist.
“Taking modern morality and putting it in the past is not right or very helpful,” said Hartmann, who has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years and whose daughter attended Sam Hughes Elementary. “What is thought to be right changes over time and it’s not up to us to assess the morality of the past or judge it.”
Black Coyote and Góshé Whitman Schools
The Miles middle school students say they want to continue the conversation about names and their history, maybe circulate a petition to reexamine the school names.
Their name proposals aim to honor each school’s history. Georgia and Charlotte suggest the name Góshé Whitman School for Sam Hughes Elementary. Góshé is the Apache word for dog and the Hughes mascot is a husky. Royal Emerson Whitman was a first lieutenant at Camp Grant and was known for giving out provisions and jobs to Apache people who were in need.
Black Coyote is the name Varun and Maya chose for Miles ELC. Black Coyote was a deaf Lakota warrior who was by some accounts, the son of Sitting Bull, their project says. “We have decided to rename it in honor of not only native peoples but also the deaf and hard of hearing community,” the project said.
In 2022, the Tempe Elementary School District took local action, changing the names of three elementary schools after it was revealed they were named after members of the Ku Klux Klan. The process took less than a year after the Tempe History Museum staff told the city.
Pursuing the renaming here “could be a long and impactful journey” for students, said Azul Navarrete-Valera, a Tucson High and UA graduate who helped lead a five-year student movement with the Tucson Native Youth Council to name Danny Lopez Park (formerly Christopher Columbus Park) on Tucson’s west side.
Navarrete-Valera advised the students to ask: “What are the morals and values now? Talk with the Miles and Sam Hughes neighborhoods, educate them,” she said. “It is worth it.”
The students are up to the challenge. “I want people to acknowledge the stakes, so the mistakes are not made again,” Maya said. “Even if the names do get changed, I feel like there should be some recognition of what happened and what the original name was and just to show that’s why we changed it, why it’s different.
“I’ve learned it’s good to take chances,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ll learn.”
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