Indianhead is to be renamed Jackson Creek Summit and Blackjack will become Black River Basin. The new names come from rivers that flow through each ski area.
The two have been jointly marketed as Big Snow Resort but this name will also go and be replaced with Snowriver Mountain Resort, but that's not through cultural sensitivity but because there's some confusion with another company called Big Snow which, among other things, runs North America's only indoor snow centre in New Jersey.
The name changes of the Michigan ski areas follows their purchase by Midwest Family Ski Resorts which also runs Lutsen Mountains in Minnesota and Granite Peak in Wisconsin.
"There are two motivating factors for the coming name changes," stated Midwest Family Ski Resorts owner Charles Skinner Jnr in a press release, explaining, "The first is a sensitivity to co-opting Native American culture. And the second is to eliminate confusion as the name Big Snow is used by another ski operation. We also feel the name changes help signal a new era of capital investment at Snowriver."
"For us, it was in a location that enabled us to see a nice circle of resorts between Lutsen, Granite Peak, and Big Snow Resort property," said Greg Fisher, Midwest Family Ski Resort chief marketing officer.