The NYC Department of Education now celebrates Columbus Day as Italian Heritage Day or Indigenous Peoples Day. The US national holiday is still called “Columbus Day” as it takes an act of Congress to change the federal and state law.
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| Drummers during Indigenous Peoples Day - © Elaine Thompson, AP |
The Federal Government still closes for Columbus Day which was first recognized in 1937 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it a federal holiday. Lobbying by Italian-American community groups led to its creation. The growing immigrant group preferred recognition as American citizens to being vilified as the latest bunch of outsiders to land here.
Columbus Day in the United States was created to stop violence against Italian Americans who were getting lynched by white supremacists in the American South along with African Americans with whom they lived and worked.
US cities mark the day in different ways - choosing rather to focus on the original inhabitants of the land which Christopher Columbus sailed, colonized, and pillaged. In NYC where the day remains a major holiday, it now centers on Italian communities and their achievements and contributions.
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| NYC's 7th Annual Event |
Columbus Day has been criticized for celebrating the discovery of a place that was already inhabited and because Columbus himself is considered responsible for the lies, rape, genocide, and enslavement of its original inhabitants.
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| new move to rename the day |
Indigenous Peoples’ Day was first adopted by the Berkeley, California City Council on Oct. 22, 1991. Observed the following year with activities and cultural events throughout the city and Bay area in lieu of the Columbus Quincentennial which marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus landing in the Americas.
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Indigenous Peoples' Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors Native American peoples and commemorates their histories and cultures. On Friday, Biden issued the first presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Mayor Bill de Blasio was booed at NYC Columbus Day Parade - Ryan Rahman/Pacific Press
The president's proclamation serves as the most significant boost yet to efforts to refocus the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus toward an appreciation of native peoples. Although he issued a proclamation of Columbus Day on Monday, Oct. 11, established by Congress.
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Biden takes the day off |
“Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past - that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them.”
Let us hope these ideas have fertile ground in which to grow and take root in the years to come. Then maybe diverse American communities can support each other better as together we mend and heal our nation and this land we all live on and love well.
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