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Changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day Gains National Approval

Ramon Taylor

   NEW YORK / SANTA FE, N.M. - Along Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, tens of
   thousands of New Yorkers and tourists celebrated the world's largest
   display of Italian-American pageantry on Columbus Day, while New Mexico
   and a growing list of states and municipalities ditched the holiday
   altogether for the first time.

   The Italian navigator namesake who sailed to the modern-day Americas in
   1492, Christopher Columbus has long been considered by [1]some
   scholarsand Native Americans as an affront to those who had settled on
   the land thousands of years prior to his arrival.

   While the earliest [2]commemoration of Columbus Day dates back to 1866
   in New York City, as a celebration to honor the heritage and
   contributions of the now-17 million Italian-Americans living in the
   United States, the movement behind "Indigenous Peoples' Day" began more
   than a century later, in 1977, by a delegation of Native nations.

   The [3]resolution, presented in Geneva at the United Nations-sponsored
   International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous
   Populations in the Americas,paved the way for cities like Berkeley,
   California to officially replace the holiday 15 years later.

   Yet to organizers of the 75th annual Columbus Day Parade, the Italian
   explorer Christopher Columbus remains worth celebrating.

   "Columbus discovered America. If it weren't for Columbus, who knows
   where we'd be today," said Aldo Verrelli, Parade Chairman with the
   Columbus Citizens Foundation.

   "[With] any of those people in those days, we have to remember the good
   that they did," Verrelli said. Let's forget about all the other
   controversy."

   It's a sentiment and a suggestion that has long divided Americans:
   honor tradition, or correct history and rectify the past.

   "There were Native Americans that were here before, but [Columbus]
   basically discovered the New World, and that's why we're here today,"
   said Joe Sanfilippo, a participant at the New York Columbus Day Parade.

   "The Europeans essentially tried to eradicate us," U.S. Congresswoman
   Deb Haaland (D-NM) told VOA. "They brought disease. They banished us to
   reservations later on when the U.S. government became an active force."

References

   1. https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/history-native-americans/
   2. https://www.thoughtco.com/columbus-day-104712
   3. https://ipdpowwow.org/Archives_1.html

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