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PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL SAKUMA, AP
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By Debra Adams Simmons, Executive Editor, HISTORY
Today is a federal holiday in the U.S., but what are we celebrating?
The first national Indigenous Peoples' Day honors “America’s first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today,” President Joe Biden said, highlighting the resilience of native people and recommitting to honor the government’s treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.
Biden also issued a Columbus Day proclamation acknowledging the contributions of Italian Americans as well as “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities” that resulted from European exploration.”
The dissonance in the two proclamations is hard to fathom. In recent years there’s been a pivot away from recognizing Columbus Day and toward Indigenous Peoples’ Day (pictured above, an early celebration in 1992 in Berkeley, California). In the move, the origins of Columbus Day at times have been lost. Erin Blakemore writes about how the day came to be:
“In 1890 anti-Italian sentiment boiled over in New Orleans after police chief David Hennessy, reputed for his arrests of Italian Americans, was murdered. In the aftermath, more than a hundred Sicilian Americans were arrested. When nine were tried and acquitted in March 1891, a furious mob rioted and broke into the city prison, where they beat, shot, and hanged at least 11 Italian American prisoners.
None of the rioters who lynched the Italian Americans were prosecuted. It remains one of the largest mass lynchings in the nation’s history,” Blakemore writes.
This soured U.S. diplomatic relations with Italy. In an attempt to appease Italy and acknowledge the contributions of Italian Americans on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival, President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 proclaimed a nationwide celebration of “Discovery Day,” recognizing Columbus as “the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.” Eventually, the nations mended their relationship and the U.S. paid $25,000 in reparations. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated it a national holiday.
For many, especially Indigenous people, the Columbus Day holiday is offensive—a celebration of invasion, theft, brutality, and colonization. The arrival celebrated by some as a day of triumphant discovery was the beginning of an incursion onto their homeland.
Columbus and his crew enabled and perpetrated the kidnapping, enslavement, forced assimilation, rape, and sexual abuse of Native people, including children. The Native American population shrank by about half after European contact.
Today, 21 states and many cities celebrate Columbus Day. Others, including Columbus, Ohio—the largest city named for the explorer—have shifted to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It is now a paid state holiday in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon (which celebrates both Columbus Day and Native American Day), South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
“We must never forget the centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror wrought upon Native communities and Tribal Nations throughout our country,” Biden said in his proclamation.
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