![]() In 1989, activists in South Dakota persuaded the state to replace Columbus Day with Native American Day. In the 1980s, Colorado’s American Indian Movement chapter began protesting the celebration of Columbus Day. Indigenous people powerīut some Americans started to question why Indigenous people – who’d been in the country all along – didn’t have their own holiday. ![]() in the 20th century, one in which the descendants of diverse ethnic European immigrants became “white” Americans. Officially celebrating Christopher Columbus – an Italian Catholic – became one way to affirm the new racial order that would emerge in the U.S. When Italians first arrived in the United States, they were targets of marginalization and discrimination. Over time, its agenda expanded to include advocacy for Catholic social values and education. He was responding, in part, to a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, a national Catholic charity founded to provide services to Catholic immigrants. It took another 42 years for Columbus Day to formally become a federal holiday, thanks to a 1934 decree by President Franklin D. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” to widespread persecution.Īnd then there was the government’s philosophy towards the country’s Native Americans, which Army Colonel Richard Henry Pratt so unforgettably articulated in 1892: “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. And while Ellis Island had opened in January of that year, welcoming European immigrants, Congress had already banned Chinese immigration a decade prior, subjecting Chinese people living in the U.S. That same year, a lynching forced black journalist Ida B. Of course, not all Americans considered themselves blessed in 1892. So it seemed logical to call on God when establishing a holiday celebrating that conquest, too. ![]() In 1892, a joint congressional resolution prompted President Benjamin Harrison to mark the “discovery of America by Columbus,” in part because of “the devout faith of the discoverer and for the divine care and guidance which has directed our history and so abundantly blessed our people.”Įuropeans invoked God’s will to impose their will on indigenous people. Why Columbus?Ĭolumbus Day is a relatively new federal holiday. The growing recognition and celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day actually represents the fruits of a concerted, decades-long effort to recognize the role of indigenous people in the nation’s history. More and more towns and cities across the country are electing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative to – or in addition to – the day intended to honor Columbus’ voyages.Ĭritics of the change see it as just another example of political correctness run amok – another flash point of the culture wars.Īs a scholar of Native American history – and a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina – I know the story is more complex than that. Increasingly, Columbus Day is giving people pause.
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