Alaska - Donald Trump has said he will rename Denali – the Indigenous name for the Alaska mountain – Mount McKinley after former President William McKinley.

"[W]e're going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley, because I think he deserves it," Trump said in a speech at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix on Sunday.

The tallest mountain in what is now called North America was known by many as Mount McKinley starting in 1896 after a gold prospector learned that McKinley, who ran on a pro-gold standard platform, had won the Republican nomination for president.

Former President Barack Obama in 2015 officially agreed to the renaming of the mountain Denali, fulfilling a 1975 request from the State of Alaska.

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Denali, meaning "the High One," is the Indigenous Koyukon people's Athabaskan name for the mountain. It predated white gold prospectors' previous names of "Densmore Mountain" or "Densmore Peak," which came into usage a few decades after Washington claimed to have "purchased" Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867. The Indigenous inhabitants of Alaska did not regard their lands to be for sale, nor were they involved in the negotiations.

Since the "Alaska Purchase," the US has engaged in a variety of racist political and legal tactics to consolidate control over the resource-rich region. These included a 1958 statehood referendum which saw many Native people effectively barred from casting a vote – in clear violation of international standards.

Today, efforts are underway at the United Nations to reassert Alaskan Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination rights amid what many consider to be an illegal US occupation of their lands.

McKinley – whom Trump described on Sunday as an "excellent president" – had a terrible track record when it came to Indigenous Peoples.

In 1898, McKinley signed the Curtis Act breaking up tribal governments and communal lands of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muskogee, Cherokee, and Seminole peoples in Indian Territory. The move resulted in the theft of 90 million acres of Indigenous lands and paved the way for Oklahoma's statehood in 1907.

McKinley also signed the 1898 Newlands Resolution to annex the Republic of Hawaii, after the 1893 illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom's Queen Lili'uokalani by American businessmen with the support of the US Marines.

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"We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny," McKinley infamously said, referencing an ideology commonly used to justify US settler-colonialism.

Hawaiian nationals – in coordination with Indigenous representatives from Alaska – are seeking restoration of independence amid the ongoing US occupation of their islands.