It’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Once upon a time, there was a man who was eager to sail to India, China, and Japan but instead got lost and ended up in the Bahamas. He kidnapped the Indigenous people of what he thought and insisted was Asia, sold them into slavery, slaughtered them, tortured them, raped them, and killed roughly half the population of Haiti. His journey to the modern-day Caribbean islands marks the beginning of colonial oppression in the Americas, the mass death of millions of people, a genocide of the Indigenous people, and the transatlantic slave trade. 

His name is Christopher Columbus.

Christopher Columbus is all over America. Streets, towns, schools, squares, and more than 50 cities have been named after him. There are even statutes of him. And as if that wasn't enough, he even got his own national holiday, Columbus Day, a US federal holiday since 1934, celebrated on the second Monday of October.

But why have we been celebrating this man?

Some believe that he discovered the land that is now known as the United States of America. Which is strange, because Christopher Columbus never set foot in North America. Never. There is also the myth that he was the first person to discover the Americas. Interesting, how exactly does one discover a place that was already inhabited by millions of people? Others will argue that he was the first European person to discover the Americas. Except he wasn't. 500 years before Columbus was born, Viking Leif Erikson had already been there. And of course, there is also the traditional story that people at the time believed the earth was flat, and Columbus was the person who proved the earth was round. Nope, thanks to Pythagoras and Aristotle people already knew the earth was round. In fact, Columbus claimed the earth was smaller than what was predicted, and you guessed it, he was wrong.

So how on earth did a man who, ironically, never set foot in North America become an American icon?

The truth is, the tradition of whitewashing violent history is as old as the United States itself and is what had us celebrate Columbus since the War of Independence. When the US fought against the British and won independence, the new nation needed a non-British heroic figure, and somehow, Christopher Columbus seemed to be an ideal candidate.

Thankfully, some people have rejected America's least favorite holiday, as well as the man behind it. Generations of Indigenous people who had been dealing with oppression and discrimination for centuries have protested Columbus Day. It was particularly during the 60s that Native rights received more attention; it was regarded as a part of the change demanded by the civil rights movement at the time. In 1977, a delegation of Native nations suggested renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a resolution that passed by an overwhelming majority but wasn't implemented until 1992. The first city to abandon Columbus Day was Berkeley, CA. While a poll by the Knights of Columbus claims that more than half of Americans think celebrating Columbus Day is a good idea, many of the myths around Columbus have been debunked, and cities around the US are making the switch to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day is about celebrating people instead of putting an egomaniac murderer who caused a genocide on a pedestal. It recognizes that Native people were the first inhabitants of the Americas and reminds us of their values, culture, and way of life. The celebration helps us rethink American history, learn about colonial oppression, and question our relationship with nature and animals. Indigenous people are the pioneers and visionary leaders when it comes to the ability to co-exist with nature and one another harmoniously. Indigenous liberation means liberation of all living beings on earth. The Western colonial matrix has put the blinkers on us; many of us fail to recognize that conversations about climate change, animal and earth liberation, and the self-organized autonomous way of life should be led by Indigenous people.

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day means decolonizing our minds and freeing ourselves from the indoctrination of colonial oppression. The colonial system exploits animals on a mass scale, destroys land for oil, burns down rainforests, and wipes out sacred lands. It is time to abandon the colonial matrix and to come together for Indigenous liberation.

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!