Indigenous Peoples’ Day is recognized the same day as Columbus Day each year, the second Monday in October. This year, Indigenous Peoples Day falls today Oct. 11, 2021.It is a day to recognize indigenous people and the contributions they’ve made to history, as well as to mourn those lost to genocide and Western colonization—and to remember that Native Americans were actually here long before European settlers showed up on these shores. In 1977, the United Nations International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas proposed that Indigenous Peoples Day replace Columbus Day.
On Friday, President Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which the Associated Press reported as
"the most significant boost yet to efforts to refocus the federal
holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus toward an appreciation of
Native peoples."
"Today,
we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that
many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous
communities," Biden wrote. "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."
Many however had a message for him today asking him as they gathered in Washington DC if he could hear them now. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/10/11/biden-can-you-hear-us-now-ask-indigenous-leaders-amid-arrests-fossil-fuel-protest?utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=
Christopher Columbus arrived in the
Bahamas on October 12, 1792,
beginning a
process of colonization and genocide against Native people, which
represents one of the darkest chapters in the history of this continent,
that unleashed unimaginable brutality against the indigenous people of
this
continent.that killed tens of millions of Native
people across the hemisphere. From the very beginning, Columbus was not
on a mission of discovery but of conquest and exploitation—he called his
expedition la empresa, the enterprise.
Even during his day, Christopher Columbus was viewed as controversial. While his arrival in the Americas, specifically in Ayiti, (Modern Haiti) allowed for the initiation of the colonialization and settlement of the Western Hemisphere, the Atlantic slave trade and the amassing of massive wealth for many European countries, many of his contemporaries thought he was unnecessarily brutal.
Columbus deserves to be remembered as the first terrorist in the
Americas. When resistance mounted to the Spaniards’ violence, Columbus
sent an armed force to “spread terror among the Indians to show them how
strong and powerful the Christians were,” according to the Spanish
priest Bartolomé de las Casas. In his book Conquest of Paradise,
Kirkpatrick Sale describes what happened when Columbus’s men
encountered a force of Taínos in March of 1495 in a valley on the island
of Hispañiola: " The soldiers mowed down dozens with
point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies,
chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike,
and [according to Columbus’s biographer, his son Fernando] “with God’s
aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing
others who were also killed.”
All this and much more has long been known and documented. As early as 1942 in his Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Admiral of the Ocean Sea,
Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that Columbus’s policies in the Caribbean
led to “complete genocide”—and Morison was a writer who admired
Columbus.
Many countries are now
acknowledging this devastating history by rejecting the federal holiday
of Columbus Day which is marked on October 12 and celebrating
Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead to honor
centuries of indigenous resistance.If Indigenous peoples’ lives
mattered in our society, and if Black
people’s lives mattered in our society, it would be inconceivable that
we would honor the father of the slave trade with a national holiday.
Let alone allow our history books to laud Columbus as some kind of hero. Because this
so-called “discovery” of the America caused the worst demographic
catastrophe of human history, with around 95 percent of the indigenous
population annihilated in the first 130 years of colonization, without
mentioning the victims from the African continent, with about 60 million
people sent to the Americas as slaves, with only 12 percent of them
arriving alive.Therefore, Native American groups consider Columbus a
European colonizer responsible for the genocide of millions of
indigenous people. Not an individual worthy of celebration because he
helped contribute to the Europeans Colonization of the Americas which
resulted in slavery, killings, and other atrocities against the native
Americans.
Columbus' voyage has even less meaning for North Americans than for
South Americans because Columbus never actually set foot on this continent, nor
did he open it to European trade.
During large waves of Italian immigration between 1880 and the start of
World War I in 1914, newly arrived Italians faced ethnic and religious
discriminations. In New Orleans in 1891, 11 Sicilian immigrants were
lynched. A year later, President Benjamin Harrison became the first
president to call for a national observance of Columbus Day, in honor of
the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival,
Italian Americans viewed celebrations of Columbus as a way to become
accepted into the mainstream American culture and, throughout the
country, they began to advocate for his recognition.
Though it wasn't recognized as a federal holiday until 1971 Italian immigrants had celebrated Columbus Day for centuries, Mariano A. Lucca, of Buffalo led the campaign for the national holiday. Colorado was the first state to formally recognize Columbus Day, doing so in 1905,
Though it wasn't recognized as a federal holiday until 1971 Italian immigrants had celebrated Columbus Day for centuries, Mariano A. Lucca, of Buffalo led the campaign for the national holiday. Colorado was the first state to formally recognize Columbus Day, doing so in 1905,
However Native Americans have been a part of the American tradition even before
the United States began, but due to hundreds of years of
persecution, much isn’t left of the neighboring tribes and many have
integrated into modern society.
In the last several years, with growing awareness of Columbus' brutal legacy and what the European arrival meant for America's first inhabitants, at least 14 states and more than 130 local governments have chosen to not celebrate the the second Monday in October as Columbus Day or have chosen to celebrate it as Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead.
Indigenous Peoples have spearheaded the cultural shift in understanding about how to mark this day.
The idea of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day was first proposed in 1977 by a delegation of Native nations to the United Nations-sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, held in Geneva, which passed that resolution.
In July 1990, representatives from 120 Indian nations from every part of the Americas met in Quito, Ecuador in the First Continental Conference (Encuentro) on 500 Years of Indian Resistance. The conference was also attended by many human rights, peace, social justice, and environmental organizations. This was in preparation for the 500th anniversary of Native resistance to the European invasion of the Americas, 1492-1992. The Encuentro saw itself as fulfilling a prophesy that the Native nations would rise again “when the eagle of the north joined with the condor of the south.” At the suggestion of the Indigenous spiritual elders, the conference unanimously passed a resolution to transform Columbus Day, 1992, "into an occasion to strengthen our process of continental unity and struggle towards our liberation." Upon return, all the conference participants agreed to organize in their communities. While the U.S. and other governments were apparently trying to make it into a celebration of colonialism, Native peoples wanted to use the occasion to reveal the historical truths about the invasion and the consequent genocide and environmental destruction, to organize against its continuation today, and to celebrate Indigenous resistance. (Indigenous Peoples' Pow Wow Website)
In the past twenty years the celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day has become a counter narrative to Columbus Day as way of correcting historical wrongs in acts of reconciliation and the roots of this rethinking go back several decades.
On October 6, 2000, the American Indian Movement Grand Governing Council wrote in a statement that "Columbus
was the beginning of the American holocaust, ethnic cleansing
characterized by murder, torture, raping, pillaging, robbery, slavery,
kidnapping, and forced removals of Indian people from their homelands."
The organization called for the federal abolition of the holiday.
In June, 2020, protestors in three cities targeted statues of Columbus, according to The Smithsonian Magazine.
A
statue of Christopher Columbus in downtown Syracuse has been the
subject of lawsuit against a plan by Mayor Ben Walsh to remove it, according to syracuse.com.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19
in the United States, Indigenous people have experienced some of the
highest mortality rates in the county. High rates of diabetes, obesity
and other poverty-related health problems make Native Americans more
vulnerable to the virus than other populations.
Nationwide one in every 475 Native Americans has died from
Covid since the start of the pandemic, compared with one in every 825
white Americans and one in every 645 Black Americans.
The true death toll is undoubtedly significantly higher as multiple
states and cities provide patchy or no data on Native Americans lost to
Covid. Of those that do, communities in Mississippi, New Mexico,
Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas have been the hardest hit.
The findings were part of the Color of Coronavirus project,
and provide the clearest evidence to date that Indian Country has
suffered terribly and disproportionately during the first year of the
deadly coronavirus pandemic. Native Americans have suffered 211 deaths
per 100,000 people, compared with 121 white Americans per 100,000.
Indigenous leaders took coronavirus more seriously than many
communities from the beginning and certainly more seriously than the
White House took the virus. By late Spring 2020 the rate of infection
among Navajo Nation communities was worse than New York, then the center of the pandemic in the US.
Even then it emerged that Native Americans were being left out of demographic data on the impact of the coronavirus across the US,
raising fears of hidden health emergencies in one of the country’s most
vulnerable populations.
Centuries after Columbus Native peoples are still fighting to protect their lands and their
rights to exist as distinct political communities and individuals.Because of historical traumas inflicted on indigenous peoples that include land
dispossession, death of the majority of the populations through warfare
and disease, forced removal and relocation, assimilative boarding school
experiences, and prohibiting religious practices, among others, indigenous peoples have experienced
historical losses, which include the loss of land, traditional and
spiritual ways, self-respect from poor treatment from government
officials, language, family ties, trust from broken treaties, culture,
and people (through early death); there are also losses that can be
attributed to increased alcoholism.
These losses have been associated with sadness and depression, anger,
intrusive thoughts, discomfort, shame, fear, and distrust around white
people Experiencing massive traumas and losses is thought to lead to cumulative and unresolved grief, which can result in the historical trauma response,
which includes suicidal thoughts and acts, IPV, depression, alcoholism,
self-destructive behavior, low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, and lowered
emotional expression and recognition .These symptoms run parallel to
the extant health disparities that are documented among indigenous
peoples.
Today is about acknowledging all this whilst honoring the rich history
of resistance that Native
communities across the world have contributed to and it is also
about sharing a deep commitment to intergenerational justice.
Celebrating Indigenous People’s Day is a step towards recognizing that
colonization still exists. We can do more to end that colonization and
respect
the sovereignty of indigenous nations.
May we spend this
day, honoring Native Peoples’ commitment to making the
world a better place for all. Reflect on their ancestral past , the
ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples in protecting their lands and
freedoms,celebrate their sacrifices and celebrate life
whilst.recognizing the
people, traditions and cultures that were wiped out because of Columbus’
colonization and acknowledge the. bloodshed and elimination of
those that were massacred, whilst transforming this day into a
celebration of indigenous people and a celebration of social justice that
allows us to make a connection between painful history and the
ongoing marginalization, discrimination and poverty that indigenous
communities face to this day. We cannot dedicate just one day to acknowledging Indigenous People's, each and every day should be an act of solidarity, by us honouring and advocating for Indigenous rights.