Two weeks ago, Portland Parks & Recreation announced the new name it had come up with for the 6.3-acre Southwest Portland park previously known as Custer Park.
‘Scht Wiwnu, pronounced “ish-chit way-el-noo,” means “path of the huckleberry” in Ichishkin Sńwit, a language spoken by Native tribes in the Columbia River area, including the Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama.
The city had spent five and a half years and nearly $20,000 brainstorming possible new names to replace the one that honored the late Gen. George Armstrong Custer, the military oppressor of Indigenous peoples who died in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in present-day Montana…