Today is the Federal Holiday honoring Christopher Columbus, the alleged discover of the New World, who made his first landfall on the island of San Salvador on October 12, 1492. Years ago, Congress, in all of its wisdom, assigned the holiday to the second Monday in October to make way for a possible three day week-end for the few people who get the day off—or possibly to extend the giant mattress sales that seem to have become one of the most visible traditions of the holiday.
The trouble is Columbus has been falling out of favor for some time, except among the Italian-Americans who used his Italian roots to claim their spot at the American table. The Columbus Day parades in the big cities are less about the Navigator—an ironic title for someone who didn’t know where the hell he was—and more about, as an Italian friend once put it, Gumba Pride.
In 2021 Puerto Rican Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa
of Chicago’s 35th Ward sponsored replacement official
recognition of Columbus Day with Indigenous
People’s Day in 2020 It would not cancel the privately sponsored Columbus Day parade which could continue to
roll. The city sponsored music
and cultural events over a two day period.
The original holiday worked as long as the Columbus story told in 19th Century school primers was the only information out there. But those damn historians insisted on poking around. Lo and behold it turns out Columbus was not a very nice man. In fact, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella rewarded him for his voyages with the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and the job of Viceroy to rule the new lands, he was so brutal, venal, and corrupt that the Catholic Priests sent to save the souls of the natives petitioned their Majesties to have him removed. So did various adventurers and would-be Conquistadors who he slapped in irons for horning in on his exclusive franchise.
In the end he was stripped of his titles and slapped in irons himself.
One of the offenses with which he was charged was virtually wiping out the Carib nation which populated most of the islands of the Caribbean by turning them into slaves. Within ten years the once numerous people were gone and the Spanish had to replace them by buying Black Africans from Arab dealers.
By the 1960’s Native peoples in both North and South America were protesting celebrations of Columbus and demanding that the people who were his victims should be the honorees, not the thief.
In 1977 at a United Nations sponsored International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland the idea of replacing Columbus Day celebrations with a day honoring Indigenous Peoples was first proposed. As the 500 year anniversary of the “Discovery” approached, Native delegates to a conference held in Quito, Ecuador in 1990 determined to plan protests and demand recognition. “Nobody discovered us,” they asserted, “We knew where we were.”
Native groups in California were among the most vocal and organized in the protests in 1992. They persuaded the city of Berkley to become the first to rename the holiday locally to the Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People, better known as Indigenous Peoples Day. The movement spread across the state. Although only two other cities followed Berkley’s lead in officially adopting the name for the local holiday, school systems, libraries, and colleges began holding alternative events. And activists began marching and sometimes disrupting official Columbus Day festivities.
South Dakota, with a large Tribal population, became the first state to jettison Columbus and adopt what they call Native American Day. That name is also used by several Oklahoma based tribes. Hawaii replaced Columbus Day with Discoverer’s Day, commemorating the Polynesian discoverers of the Islands.
Several cities, including Columbus, Ohio have simply dropped the holiday entirely and canceled the traditional parades. In San Francisco, with its large Italian community axed Columbus and simply declared the day Italian Heritage Day instead but in 2018 also adopted Indigenous Peoples Day.
This year Chicago is one of those cities still going ahead with its giant parade down State Street today. Mayor Brandon Johnson will conveniently be in England and can duck any controversy.
Relations between Native American and Italian communities were completely ruptured after statues of Columbus were vandalized in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that demanded monuments to historic figures who despite other accomplishments were perpetrators of oppression to People of Color and other minorities. The City removed the statues for “safe keeping” but has waffled for years on restoring at least one in place. The statues remain in storage and official limbo.
In an attempted gesture of reconciliation the Join Civic Committee of Italian Citizens, sponsor of the parade, invited a Native American group to join in dialogue and officially participate it the parade. Not everyone, however, was on board. The invited group, Native American Guardian Association, is based in North Dakota and its dancers are regular participants at pow wows, rodeos, festivals, and parades. The Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative is pushing back and saying that the Dakota group does not represent local sentiment.
By his year 20 states have joined the parade to replace or co-celebrate Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in addition to countless municipalities, counties, and other units of local government.
So far Congress has ignored calls to make a change on the Federal level.
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