The Renaming of Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Why is it important?
The renaming shifts the celebration from honoring an historical person that for many people has become a tarnished legacy to a current and integral people in our world.
• Honoring Native Identity: Advocates emphasize that recognizing Indigenous peoples restores identity, empowers Native communities, and tells an authentic historical narrative rather than a sanitized myth.
• Correcting Education: The shift encourages K-12 schools to move away from outdated curricula that depict Native Americans strictly in the past and instead highlight their ongoing contributions.
• Addressing Colonization: Critics of Columbus Day point out that his arrival initiated land loss, forced assimilation, and widespread suffering for Indigenous nations, making a celebratory holiday deeply harmful to descendants of those survivors.
A Quick History
Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an official city and state holiday in various localities in the United States. It celebrates and honors Indigenous American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures. Celebrated each year on the second Monday in October, it began as a counter-celebration held on the same day as Columbus Day, citing the lasting harm Indigenous tribes suffered because of Columbus’s contributions to the European colonization of the Americas.
In July 1990, at the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Quito, Ecuador, representatives of Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas agreed that they would mark 1992, the 500th anniversary of the first of the voyages of Christopher Columbus, as a year to promote “continental unity” and “liberation.”
After the conference, attendees from Northern California organized protests against the “Quincentennial Jubilee” that had been planned by the United States Congress for the San Francisco Bay Area on Columbus Day in 1992. It was to include replicas of Columbus’s ships sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge and reenacting their “discovery” of America. The delegates formed the Bay Area Indian Alliance and in turn, the “Resistance 500” task force that promoted the idea that Columbus’s “discovery” of inhabited lands, and the subsequent European colonization, had resulted in the genocide of thousands of Indigenous peoples because of the decisions which were made by colonial and national governments. The group convinced the city council of Berkeley, California, to declare October 12 as a “Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People” and 1992 as the “Year of Indigenous People.” The city implemented related programs in schools, libraries, and museums. Berkeley has celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day ever since.
The roots of the current holiday can be traced to discussions and propositions in 1977 about replacing Columbus Day in the Americas with a celebration to be known as Indigenous Peoples Day. The International NGO Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas took place in Geneva, Switzerland.
This shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day has spread to cities and states across the country. At least 14 states do not celebrate Columbus Day (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin Washington, DC and South Dakota (which celebrates Native American Day). Various tribal governments in Oklahoma designate the day as “Native American Day”, or have renamed the day after their own tribes. On August 30, 2017, Oberlin, Ohio, and later by Bangor, Maine, joined the growing number of places that began to honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Although it is not a federal holiday under US law, in 2021 the Biden Administration formally recognized Indigenous Peoples Day. The first White House proclamation on the holiday was written with input from Indigenous activists. Presidential proclamations have also been issued in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
What Comes Next?
It will be interesting to follow the progression of this movement as the next generation is introduced to a more realistic, and difficult, version of our nation’s history.