Trying to bridge two tribes
The Virginia-class attack submarine USS Missouri (SSN 780) heads towards the Thames River Bridge as it departs Naval Submarine Base New London for a scheduled deployment.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
There’s a dispute possibly brewing between the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, on the east side of the Thames River, in eastern Connecticut, and the Mohegan Tribal Nation, on the west side. Both tribes, best known for their huge casinos, want the river to have a Native American name rather than the English colonial one it has, named after the river that flows through London. (Thus there’s New London on the mouth of the waterway, much of which is an estuary.)
The Connecticut General Assembly is considering legislation to make the name more politically correct.
The Pequots want the river to be named, naturally, the Pequot River, a name used by early English colonists until they had it named the Thames in 1658.
But “In the spirit of cooperation, we have reached out to our neighbors at the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in the hope of discussing a traditional name that would be agreeable to both of Connecticut’s federally recognized tribes,” said Charlie Strickland, chairman of the Mohegan Tribal Council of Elders.
This endless name changing is getting tedious. There’s apt to be pushback, as there has been in New York City since 2008, when the Triboro Bridge was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Most people still call it the Triboro.