The name “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” paints over history and fails to properly celebrate Native Nations, whose individual and year-round celebrations should be observed instead. The holiday, also known as Columbus Day, should go by that name and hold a twofold significance of both celebrating Italian-American heritage and solemnly memorializing Christopher Columbus’s damaging arrival.
Before beginning my argument, I want to mention that I do not have a tribal ID within the Seminole Tribe of Florida, although through complex regulations, I would if my Seminole grandfather were still alive. Even though I grew up listening to Native stories and attending local Powwows, I was mostly raised separated from the community, sadly, and won’t claim Native cultural identity in this article despite my ancestry. I have no Italian heritage.
In 1937, a presidential decree declared Columbus Day a national holiday, and in 1968, Congress made the day a federal holiday, as per the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Originally, the holiday served as a celebration of Italian-American immigrants at a time when anti-Italian and anti-Catholic sentiment raged, per a 2021 article in TIME. Indigenous Peoples’ Day, recognized by presidential proclamations in 2021, has become a popular substitute or complement for Columbus Day at state and local levels. The law of Massachusetts, one of fifteen states that have not officially recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day, still legally recognizes only Columbus Day according to a 2025 WPRI article; other states recognize either both holidays or only Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Ever since around 2021, when Milton Academy first rebranded to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I have viewed the change as an insensitive erasure of history. After all, the day marks the arrival of Columbus to the Americas, and to pretend otherwise—to embrace an artificial perspective that the second Monday in October commemorates some respectful celebration of Native livelihood—distorts reality. However uncomfortable, we must acknowledge the harsh truth of colonial history: that explorers like Columbus enslaved and killed Natives. Indigenous Peoples’ Day arose as a “counter-programming,” as TIME calls it, to Columbus Day, but this argument, along with the re-naming, implies that a 'counter-history’ took place when it did not. If the revised framework had instead taken an approach similar to the Day of Mourning, a somber remembrance hosted by the United American Indians of New England on Thanksgiving, history might have remained preserved. Nonetheless, my proposal points toward a more solemn treatment of Columbus Day and not a complete renaming and warping of history.
A second problem of Indigenous Peoples’ Day stems from inevitably short celebrations, which tend to wrongly combine many Native cultures into one. For example, last year’s annual “Indigenous Peoples Day Powwow” of Berkeley, California, the first city to recognize the new holiday, advertised “Native American foods” and “American Indian culture,” terms which I find laughable just like 'European foods’ or 'European culture.’ Culinary and cultural practices vary so greatly across Indigenous Nations that lumping them together amounts to a nonsensical amalgamation of gross over-simplification.
These generalizations of course stem from an attempt to transform the diverse Native communities across North America into wooden horses on the political map of virtue signaling. Lazily, these mysterious players will artificially observe unnamed “rich histories,” as the DEIJ office put it in their both 2023 and 2024 Native American Heritage Month email, to briefly comfort themselves with a political high ground without ever understanding or spending time with what they preach.
Instead, celebrations of different Nations’ cultures should take place organically and focus on local tribes. For example, the Annual Mashpee Wampanoag Powwow, a core childhood memory of mine, takes place in July and presents a key cultural element of a thriving Native community. Reading more about the Wampanoag-led National Day of Mourning would provide perspective on the horrendous atrocities of history, and learning a language like Mikasuki or making sofkee would provide opportunities to respect Native traditions.
A case must also arise for the positive connotation of Columbus Day as an Italian-American heritage day. Each year, the Columbus Day Parade serves as “a vibrant tribute to Italian-American culture and heritage” and features “traditional dances, authentic food, and folkloric performances,” per the Columbus Citizens Foundation. While the school has traditionally ignored this aspect of Columbus Day and Italian-American heritage month every October, the celebration of Italian heritage came after decades of discrimination against Italians and Catholics by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. During these decades, anti-immigrant groups burned down churches and lynched Italians according to the Library of Congress.
According to a 2021 article in TIME magazine, the Italian-American connection to Columbus provided a sense of belonging in America for many Italian immigrants and became a symbol of community. We must respect the holiday’s traditional significance for Italian-Americans.
Of course, we cannot regard Columbus Day as detached from history, but similarly, we should not overwrite that history. Considering these multicultural perspectives, Columbus Day should act as a twofold holiday: one to support Italian-Americans in celebrations such as the Columbus Day Parade, and another to mourn Columbus’s devastating actions in an approach similar to the nuanced duality between Thanksgiving and the Day of Mourning. Whatever the case though, we should not naïvely rename the day.
Instead, view the day for what it commemorates—an atrocity for Native Americans and a celebration of Italian heritage—and remember to celebrate Native Nations through specific acts of learning and immersion, not generalized observances.