Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a holiday in the United States that was created in reaction to Columbus Day, a national holiday dedicated to celebrating the explorer who led expeditions to the Americas starting in 1492.
Columbus has become a controversial figure and, as a result, many states and cities have decided to rename the holiday for the Indigenous communities who already lived in the Americas when Columbus and his crews arrived on shore - a population that was enslaved and ultimately killed off en masse.
Here’s what you need to know about the renamed national holiday.
How long has Columbus Day been around?
Columbus Day is typically observed on the second Monday in October. This year, the holiday will take place on Monday, 9 October 2023.
It became US federal holiday in 1937 after an effort by Roman Catholic Italian Americans, who were at the time members of a particularly stigmatised ethnic and religious group.
Members of that group campaigned to establish Columbus Day as a holiday in order to establish Christopher Columbus - a Catholic Italian - as an important and central figure in American history.
Along the way, their efforts wound up cultivating the false impression among many Americans that Columbus literally discovered the Americas, even though Indigenous communities had established settlements at least 500 years prior to Columbus’ arrival.
Why have many renamed Columbus Day?
While much of American history has been written around the conquests of European descendants, there has been increasing recognition that the American narrative has served to only marginalise Indigenous peoples, whose communities were negatively impacted by genocide and colonisation.
“Columbus Day is not just a holiday, it represents the violent history of colonisation in the Western hemisphere,” Leo Killsback, a professor of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University, told the History Channel.
Many American public schools do not teach students in-depth about the 10 million or so people who lived in the Americas before Europeans arrived, and what has happened to that population through the years.
Which brings us to Columbus himself: Indigenous Peoples’ Day highlights the brutal history of the man, and his treatment of the Indigenous people he found already living in the Americas when he arrived.
Historians have found evidence that Columbus and his teams enslaved native inhabitants of the West Indies, and subjected them to extreme violence. That treatment started on the first day he arrived, according to his journal, which says that he immediately ordered the seizure of six native people to be used as servants.
Some claims state Columbus oversaw the slaughter of Indigenous people, and even ordered people’s hands be cut off for failing to perform tasks for his teams.
Is Indigenous Peoples’ Day a federal holiday?
Indigenous Peoples’ Day has been recognised for decades in different forms and under a variety of names to celebrate Native Americans’ history and culture, and to recognise the challenges they continue to face.
In 2021, US President Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He said in a statement that the day is meant to “honour America’s first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today.”
Although it is not a federal holiday, Indigenous Peoples’ day is celebrated all over the country. Across the US, 17 states - including Washington, South Dakota and Maine, as well as Washington, DC - have holidays honoring Indigenous communities. Dozens of cities and school systems observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day as well.
Several US lawmakers have since reintroduced legislation meant to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a federal holiday.
How do people celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day?
Indigenous Peoples’ Day is often marked by protests against memorials to Columbus, for environmental justice, for the return of Indigenous lands and in honour of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. By calling attention to Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the desire to make it a federal holiday, supporters hope that it will bring attention to the ways Indigenous people are discriminated against and disproportionately affected by climate change and gender violence.
Additional reporting from AP.
