Bainbridge's Wilkes Elementary is getting a new name that recognizes the Suquamish Tribe

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – What has long been known as Captain Charles Wilkes Elementary is now getting a name recognizing the history of the Suquamish Tribe: x̌alilc (Halilts) Elementary.

Bainbridge Island School Board members voted unanimously in favor of the name change for the school at their meeting Thursday night.

“We always do our land acknowledgement at the beginning, and I think that it’s time that we really put something behind that and name our school with a tribal name,” said board member Lynn Smith. “I think it’s just such an opportunity for us to take, and I think there will be educational opportunities around this for our kids and learning a new language. I’m just really excited for that.”

Said board president Mark Emerson: “For me personally, the Halilts name, it starts a larger conversation. It would be just a beautiful thing to develop a curriculum like ‘Leaving Our Island’ (about the forced exclusion of Japanese-American residents of Bainbridge Island during World War II) that could then be pushed out not just to Halilts but also then to every one of our elementary schools. That’s what makes Bainbridge unique and special.”

A committee narrowed down a list of 89 possible names to three for the board’s consideration: Akio Suyematsu Elementary, x̌alilc (Halilts) Elementary and Sunrise Hill Elementary. The Halilts name references a culturally significant petroglyph belonging to the Suquamish Tribe on the north end of Bainbridge Island. The district received the tribe's blessing to use the name, and tribal officials were present at Thursday night's meeting.

"I am so honored on behalf of the Suquamish Tribe to have even a Lushootseed name in consideration," Denita Holmes, a member of the tribe's council, told school board members ahead of the vote. "It’s a big step. It’s a big step of building bridges from one government to another."

Said Suquamish Tribal Chairman Leonard Forsman in a statement: “The Suquamish Tribe is pleased with the Bainbridge Island School District Board of Directors unanimous decision to bestow the traditional name Halilts as the new name for Wilkes Elementary. The name is attached to the ancient petroglyph at Agate Point that has stood watch over our lands and waters for many centuries. We look forward to the staff, students and families of the elementary school learning more about this name and the culture and traditions of the Suquamish Tribe.”

Prior to the board’s vote, Amii Thompson, who chaired the committee that worked on the renaming process and serves as the Bainbridge Island School District's executive director of elementary teaching and learning, addressed comments she said she had seen on social media and out in the community saying that two of the three names the committee selected were not pronounceable.

“I feel like it’s really important to just say that we can do better than that,” she said. “I think that it’s important that we call it systemic racism, and we recognize that we can pronounce ‘Suyematsu’ and ‘Halilts.’”

She added: “I feel like we can do better, so I just want to state that on behalf of the committee that we feel really proud of our three finalists. It’s just really important to recognize, I think, the moment and the opportunity and to not quickly pass by that and sell our students and our community short in thinking of what we are capable of.”

Kyle Meidell, a Bainbridge High School history teacher and a member of the committee, walked the board through some of the history of Charles Wilkes – who led an expedition from 1838 to 1842 that included exploration of the Pacific Ocean and Washington’s waters – and pointed to a handful of incidents that prompted the reconsideration for the Wilkes name.

“This story, I think, suggests that maybe we can do better,” he said.

He noted orders from Wilkes that resulted in the destruction of a pair of villages on the Fijian island of Malolo in response to the murders of two of his officers. A punitive expedition resulted in the deaths of many people. He also pointed to Wilkes “dramatically exceeding” regulations in flogging crew members and noted the man’s role in the "Trent Affair," a diplomatic incident that strained relations between the United States and Great Britain during the Civil War.

“We did look at the history of Wilkes as kind of a guiding principle for what we’re looking for in a name, what values a name of a school should represent,” Meidell said. “If you think about the name on an elementary school as an instructional tool, it’s an incredibly valuable piece of real estate. The children see that every day, going in and out of the building, and we wanted to make sure that what we were doing was using a name that was going to represent our community's values or role models or our community's story in some way."

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Bainbridge's Wilkes Elementary renamed to honor Suquamish