President Joe Biden on Friday became the first sitting U.S. president to issue a presidential proclamation marking Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is set to be celebrated on Monday – the same day as Columbus Day.
“The contributions that Indigenous peoples have made throughout history — in public service, entrepreneurship, scholarship, the arts, and countless other fields — are integral to our Nation, our culture, and our society,” Biden wrote in the proclamation Friday. “Today, we acknowledge the significant sacrifices made by Native peoples to this country — and recognize their many ongoing contributions to our Nation.”
Biden also issued a separate proclamation on Friday acknowledging Columbus Day, in which he celebrated Italian Americans but also referred to the violence Columbus inflicted on Native communities during his time.
Over one hundred cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco – and a number of states – including Minnesota, Alaska, Vermont, and Oregon – have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, choosing instead to recognize the native populations that were displaced and decimated after Columbus and other European explorers reached the continent. Berkeley, California, was the first city to adopt Indigenous Peoples’ Day, in 1992.
The naming issue invokes strong feelings
Calling the day Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day invokes very strong reactions in some parts of our society, especially after former President Donald Trump in his 2020 Columbus Day proclamation blasted “radical activists” who “have sought to undermine the legendary figure, undermining Christopher Columbus’ legacy.”
As I remember, In June of 2020, Trump also signed an Executive Order, “protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues – and combatting recent Criminal Violence.” This move, occurring after the protests over George Floyd’s death and the toppling of statues of Southern Civil War-era Generals and is indirectly tied in with Trump’s Columbus Day proclamation.
This period of time was the start of a serious effort to finally rid our history books of a sugar-coated history of America’s founding that had been spoon-fed to millions of children for hundreds of years. America’s sordid history of slavery and the treatment of our Indigenous people was finally brought out into the light of day.
Across the U.S., lawmakers in at least 28 states are attempting to pass so-called anti-critical race theory legislation that would prohibit teachers from teaching their students about the role of racism, sexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history. The majority of educators are against that legislation.
Texas state Rep. Erin Zwiener (D), who has worked as an educator says teaching the truth allows us to not make the same mistakes again. “It’s about knowing our full story, and knowing the progress that has been made so that we can protect it … Fragility really gets in the way of our ability to have full conversations.”
As President Biden said today, “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.”
