DU’s Native Student Alliance celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day last Monday, Oct. 10, with a teepee placed prominently on the Driscoll Green. Never heard of such a day? Neither had I until I came to DU and got involved with NSA. The day is a re-naming of Columbus Day, done to counteract and discourage celebration of a man guilty of numerous atrocities.
I enjoyed NSA’s education efforts because they drew attention to Columbus’ crimes, on top of reminding students that it was Columbus Day. I believe that most DU students weren’t aware that it was Columbus Day – probably because we didn’t get a day off from classes for it.
Columbus Day is a holiday that is widely accepted and casually acknowledged because people view it as a vacation day, and who doesn’t like a day off? It’s so easy to forget about the history of Columbus’ conquest or to discount the effects it had on all native populations.
As with many holidays, the symbolism is largely ignored and adapted to fit our desired method of celebration. Easter celebrations, for example, have nothing to do with the original religious history, and instead have become a day for pretty colors and candy.
Columbus Day should not be celebrated nor simply thought of as a day off. This is why I am strongly in support of the title being changed to Indigenous People’s Day to serve a more symbolic purpose.
While the spirit behind Columbus Day is meant to celebrate the beginning of the path to the U.S.A., this subsequently turns into an acknowledgement of stealing the land from its natives. Celebrating Columbus Day solely for the celebration of America’s existence, and maybe even for simply an extra day off, blatantly ignores the genocide, colonization and greed that characterized Columbus’ explorations and discoveries.
The change in title to Indigenous People’s Day is a very reasonable reworking of the celebration and acknowledgement of the origins of “civilization” in North America. There is no demand for reparations or guilt, only a desire to remind people that our history is complex and not easily definable as the work of great men and that Columbus certainly isn’t a great man to be remembering. The purpose of Indigenous Peoples Day is to bring acknowledgement and remembrance of America’s twisted road to power that was largely accomplished by crushing native populations.
It is important for the DU student body to think about the people who were impacted by Columbus, at least for one day of the year. Perhaps with this shifted focus, Indigenous Peoples Day will be more frequently acknowledged and remembered than the former Columbus Day.
