Indigenous Peoples’ Day grew out of counter-celebrations against Columbus Day. Columbus Day itself didn’t become a national holiday until 1971, but it has been celebrated in various forms since the founding of the United States in the late 1700s. It grew out of the American tradition of celebrating the “explorers” who “discovered” this land – an absurd notion since Native people lived in North America for tens of thousands of years before any European “explorers” came here. But the Indigenous peoples of North America have always known this truth, and many of them have expressed it to those who would listen. Soon after Columbus Day was proclaimed a federal holiday, a number of Native American groups began suggesting the replacement of Columbus Day with a day celebrating Native people. In the 1990s, some municipalities took the decision to honor Indigenous peoples instead of Columbus, and further national recognition of the holiday came in the early 2020s after the Black Lives Matter movement and the George Floyd uprising caused more people to recognize the need to expand our awareness of racial groups and issues beyond Eurocentric and white. Of course, many conservatives have argued against any shifts in how we recognize history. Donald Trump has called the move to honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day “a vicious and merciless campaign to erase our history, slander our heroes, and attack our heritage.”
All of that is nonsense. Recognizing Native American and other histories and cultures is not an attack on white history or culture. It is literally the least we can do, since recognition is far from adequate. Posting “Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day!” on Facebook or a meme on Instagram does nothing to change the material conditions of Indigenous peoples or anyone else. The United States is built on land that our ancestors stole from the Native people who lived here. We must start from that understanding.
Sometimes people respond to this idea with the disingenuous comback, “Well, why don’t you go back to Europe then!” This is a strawman argument that no one is making. Native people are not saying, “White people in the United States, you must donate your homes to us and move back to Europe where your ancestors came from.” What they are asking is that all of us who make up the United States make our political, economic, and moral decisions from the understanding that this land has been unjustly taken. This means we cannot just honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day or do land acknowledgements at the start of events.
We must pursue a populist economic agenda that provides for the needs of all people in this nation – so that we all have housing, healthcare, and pre-K through university education. And we must go beyond that by pursuing policies that allow Native nations to maintain and grow their sovereignty and so that federal lands are managed and controlled by Native people. This agenda would benefit Indigenous peoples. And it would benefit all of us.
It is this combination of the general and specific – pursuing policies that are good for all working people while targeting the needs of individual groups – that will lead us all to liberation on Indigenous People’s Day and every day.
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