Indigenous Peoples Day (Photo – Robbt)
Although Christopher Columbus landed in North America, he did not discover it, it was already home to Native Americans. Columbus’s “discovery” was the beginning of the European invasion of North America.
By Cheryl Cabot
In recent years, many states and cities (including Los Angeles) have opted to celebrate “Indigenous People’s Day” as an alternative to Columbus Day. This is a way to honor Native Americans, the original inhabitants of North America.
Many American students can go through school without ever learning that North America was home to indigenous people when Columbus landed. In a 2015 op-ed in the huffpost, Shannon Speed—director of the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Chickasaw tribal citizen—wrote that “virtually none of my university students has had any education whatsoever in the history of this country’s treatment of the ten million or so people who lived here before Europeans arrived.”
“Indigenous People’s Day represents a much more honest and fair representation of American values,” writes Leo Killsback, who is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of southeastern Montana.
Both Indigenous People’s Day and Columbus Day are on October 14 this year—however you choose to celebrate the day.
Leave a Reply