Indigenous Peoples' Day

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a holiday that celebrates the cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Americas by honoring their history and heritage. It is normally celebrated on the second Monday of October in the United States, the same day as Columbus Day. The first state to call for a holiday celebrating Indigenous peoples was South Dakota, whose state legislature approved the implementation of Native Americans’ Day in 1989. The holiday was first celebrated the following year in South Dakota and later spread to many more cities, officially taking on the Indigenous Peoples' Day moniker in 1991. Indigenous Peoples' Day was initiated as a counter celebration to Columbus Day, which celebrates Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Indigenous advocacy groups believe Columbus Day should not be a federal holiday due to the atrocities committed by Columbus and his fellow colonizers against Indigenous peoples. Activists believe Columbus Day misleads American citizens into believing Columbus was a hero, when historically he caused a great amount of suffering for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. By the mid-2020s, at least seventeen states had officially recognized a day honoring the Indigenous peoples of America, and more than one hundred cities in the United States celebrated the holiday annually.

Background

Columbus Day was deemed a federal holiday in 1937 following a strong advocacy effort by Roman Catholic Italian Americans. This group aimed to raise historic recognition of notable Catholic Italians. The holiday was celebrated without question for many decades before people began to grasp the atrocities committed by Columbus and his men following their arrival in the Americas in the fifteenth century. By the late 1970s, a number of Indigenous advocacy groups had begun to shed light on these facts, highlighting the violence committed against Native Americans during Columbus’s colonization. Activists also noted how biased American education was against Indigenous history and how few students were aware of how European colonization affected Native Americans.

In 1977, delegates from all over the world gathered at the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas hosted by the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The group tentatively discussed replacing Columbus Day with a holiday celebrating Indigenous peoples but the decision was tabled. Indigenous advocacy movements had taken hold in several parts of the United States, however, and some states were considering replacing Columbus Day with a day dedicated to honoring the lives of Native Americans. The first state to rename Columbus Day was South Dakota, which began calling the second Monday of October Native Americans’ Day in 1990.

Indigenous history advocates managed to convince a number of cities to show their solidarity by protesting Columbus Day celebrations and bringing attention to the brutalities committed against Indigenous peoples throughout American history. Cities such as Berkeley, California, introduced Indigenous history initiatives into schools, museums, libraries, and other public forums. Berkeley unofficially renamed Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 1992, instituting an annual festival and powwow the following year. Berkeley’s actions caught the attention of other regions of the country, and soon more American cities began to rethink their celebration of Columbus Day. Over the next few decades, a slew of cities created resolutions to replace Columbus Day celebrations with a day honoring Native Americans.

Overview

By the mid-2020s, at least seventeen states had officially recognized a day honoring the Indigenous peoples of America, usually on the same day as Columbus Day: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. More than one hundred American cities celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day by that point, with some celebrating both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day. A number of universities participate in Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrations each year as well, including Brown University, the University of Utah, Cornell University, and the University of New Mexico.

Indigenous Peoples' Day celebrations vary by region, but most festivities revolve around raising awareness about the suffering experienced by Native Americans at the hands of European colonizers. Advocacy initiatives have often involved recasting Christopher Columbus’s image outside the realm of hero given the cruelties he perpetuated upon many of the Native Americans he encountered. Many schools across the United States have historically taught children that Christopher Columbus was a hero for “discovering” America, a notion the Indigenous population resents given that Native Americans had been living on the land for millennia prior to the arrival of Columbus and other European explorers. Activists have also utilized Indigenous Peoples' Day to stage protests against Columbus Day activities such as parades.

A 2015 study conducted by researchers at Penn State University-Altoona found that 87 percent of references to Native Americans in US curricula only cover Native American history prior to 1900. Researchers noted that many schools’ approach to the history of the Indigenous peoples of America gives students the false impression that the massacres and mass relocations committed against Native Americans are the end of their history. The study argues that these findings show a one-sided narrative of the American narrative, which fails to recognize Indigenous experiences. Findings such as these have given Indigenous advocates further cause for advancing public recognition of Indigenous peoples in America. By the end of the 2010s, more schools and universities were coming to terms with the ways education has failed to accurately capture the history of the Indigenous population and began implementing initiatives to remedy the situation. The movement to replace Columbus Day has continued to gain momentum across the country, with the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, voting to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day in October 2019, making it one of more than 130 cities to do so. In October 2020, the state of Virginia's governor declared its first Indigenous Peoples' Day. At the federal level, on October 8, 2021, President Joe Biden issued a presidential proclamation, for the first time in the country's history, that declared official observation and commemoration of Indigenous Peoples' Day on October 11 along with Columbus Day. Additionally, Biden's Columbus Day proclamation honored the contributions of Italian Americans while also directly acknowledging the wrongs and atrocities inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of America.

Bibliography

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