What’s in a name?: A Reno bakery changes ‘squaw bread’ to ‘prairie bread’ after protest

When a Reno bakery owner declined to talk to Wishelle Banks about changing the name of their “squaw bread”—a moniker widely recognized as a slur against Indigenous women—Banks went to the store on Nov. 20 to stand in the rain with a protest sign. 

When Banks arrived at the House of Bread at 1185 California Ave., however, a bakery employee met her to say the name had been changed to “prairie bread” and that the matter was resolved. The Reno franchise is now in line with four other House of Bread franchise locations in California and Alaska, which previously had changed the offending name to prairie bread. 

“It was the best possible outcome,” said Banks, a screenwriter and retired journalist from Reno, who is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. (She is a former RN&R contributor.) She said the word “squaw” is “like calling a woman the c-word. It’s a cultural issue and a community issue.” 

Employees said House of Bread franchise owners Tim and Nathalie Atwell weren’t present during the protest. Nathalie Atwell, who earlier wrote to Banks in an email that the name would remain, didn’t return calls for comment. In the email to Banks in November, Nathalie Atwell wrote that grandmothers might be upset about “grandma’s white,” another of the bakery’s offerings, because “who wants to be called White these days?” 

However, the word “squaw” carries centuries of negative baggage. 

Most dictionaries now define the word as offensive, racist and dehumanizing. Linguists report that the word probably came from the Algonquin language and meant “woman,” but devolved into a slur against Indigenous women. Other scholars suspect that the Mohawk word for “vagina,” which has a second syllable that sounds like “squaw,” may have been conflated into early settlers’ use of the word. The term became a vulgar, sexist slur for Native American women, often linked to anatomical meanings by colonists, a member of the Cheyenne tribe said in a Rocky Mountain PBS program in 2022. 

In 2022, the Interior Department, led by Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, ordered that the word be stripped from more than 650 locations on federal land, including mountains, rivers, lakes and other geographic sites. “Racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands. Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural heritage—not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression,” Haaland said in a news release about the change. Tribes were consulted about new names for the landmarks, which are now in place. 

In Nevada, the 34 new names on federal land include East Pequop Creek (Elko County), Koe Pato butte (Pershing County), Daisy Peak (Lander County), the Depa No’obi hills (Nye County), Mohave Peaks (Clark County) and Too Kapu Tawaka valley (Washoe County).  

In 2021, the name of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, was changed to Palisades Tahoe after extensive research by resort officials in consultation with the Washoe Tribe of California and Nevada. The resort’s name had been a matter of controversy for decades. 

“While we love our local history and the memories we all associate with this place as it has been named for so long, we are confronted with the overwhelming evidence that the term ‘squaw’ is offensive,” Ron Cohen, president of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, wrote when the name change was announced in 2020. “… We have to accept that as much as we cherish the memories we associate with our resort name, that love does not justify continuing to use a term that is widely accepted to be a racist and sexist slur.” 

Critics argue such name changes “erase history,” but proponents, including the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, counter that eliminating the offensive word helps heal centuries of wounds against Indigenous people and provides a more honest accounting of America’s past. 

Many bakeries across the country and in Nevada have changed the name of the sweet brown bread—which is usually made with whole wheat, white and rye flour, and blended with honey—to “prairie bread,” “pioneer bread” or “brown bread.”  

Banks said she would rather have met with the bakery’s owners to present her case and not resorted to a public protest, but “it turned out well. Some things are worth standing up for, showing up for and speaking up for,” she said.