NOW Celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day, a day to honor and recognize the First Peoples of America.

President Biden became the first U.S. President to formally commemorate Indigenous Peoples' Day in 2021, but it is not yet a federal holiday. However, the Indigenous Peoples' Day Act has been introduced in Congress to designate the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples' Day nationwide, an update to our historical perspective that is long overdue.

The colonial takeovers of the Americas, starting with Columbus, led to the deaths of millions of Native people and the forced assimilation of survivors. Generations of Native people have protested Columbus Day as it venerates what historians consider the start of the United States' colonial system built on genocide, displacement, enslavement, white supremacy, torture and other atrocities to Native people.

Indigenous Peoples' Day is meant to bring attention to some of the ways Indigenous peoples are discriminated against and are disproportionately affected by climate change, gender violence and health issues, as well as to the Indigenous lands affected by mining, drilling and both public and private projects.

Audra Simpson, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, points to "the pipelines and fracking projects running through our territories" and "the ongoing and disproportionate violence directed at Indigenous people, especially women, girls and trans."

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold that post, had made that violence a priority with the establishment of a Missing and Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and in his Proclamation on Indigenous Peoples' Day 2024, President Biden said,

"When my Administration reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act in 2022, we included historic provisions to reaffirm Tribal sovereignty and expand Tribal jurisdiction in cases where outside perpetrators harm members of their Nation. And recognizing the ties of Indigenous peoples across North America, I supported a Trilateral Working Group with Canada and Mexico to ensure Indigenous women and girls in all three countries can live free from violence."

The movement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day or Native American Day has gained momentum and spread to states, cities, and towns across the United States. The first state to rename Columbus Day was South Dakota, in 1990. Hawai'i has also changed the name of its October 12 holiday to Discoverers' Day, in honor of the Polynesian navigators who peopled the islands. Berkeley, California, became the first city to make the change in 1992, when the city council renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day. Today, approximately 29 states and Washington, D.C. do not celebrate Columbus Day, and about 216 cities have renamed it or replaced it with Indigenous Peoples' Day.

NOW members know that the grade school lesson about "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue" is incomplete at best, a dangerous myth at worst. Indigenous communities lived in the Western Hemisphere for tens of thousands of years before Columbus arrived, and contact with European colonies led to devastating loss of life, tradition and land for American Indians, according to theSmithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

On this Indigenous Peoples' Day, we stand with Tribal Nations to acknowledge and heal from painful history, and also celebrate their enduring strength and resilience, uplift Tribal communities, and support sovereignty and self-determination.