LIGHTFOOT WEIGHS IN ON CITY CALENDAR: COLUMBUS STAY
After CPS replaces holiday honoring explorer with Indigenous Peoples Day, mayor says City Hall won’t follow suit
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday she has no plans to duplicate at the city level what her handpicked school board just did, pleasing Native Americans and infuriating some Italian Americans. That is, replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
“I do think we’ve got a lot more to do to make sure that we are aware and sensitive of the history but I absolutely have no plans to support any elimination of Columbus Day at the city level,” the mayor said at an unrelated news conference after unveiling her plan to bolster CTA security.
Lightfoot noted that for a number of years, the Chicago Public Schools have essentially celebrated both Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day. She “thought that made sense.”
The mayor was not asked — nor did she explain — why, if she thought a shared holiday made sense, her handpicked school board forged ahead with the change that has so infuriated Italian American aldermen and civic groups. She would only say of Native Americans that “they are a marginalized community and ... there’s a lot more we can do.”
But Heather Miller, the executive director of the American Indian Center of Chicago, said the change was important because “we don’t want to celebrate someone who represents this idea of colonization and genocide.”
“When [Columbus’] ships arrived in this area, his actions and the actions that were taken by his crew did indeed lay the groundwork and the framework for slavery,” said Miller, an enrolled member of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma.
“For us, we want to make it clear that this is not anti-Italian American. It’s anti-Columbus,” Miller said. “It would be amazing if instead of celebrating someone that represents death, destruction, genocide and violence, perhaps we pick an Italian American figure that truly expresses things that make our communities great and express what it truly means to be American.”
Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st), however, applauded Lightfoot for “drawing a line in the sand” by retaining the city holiday of Columbus Day and urged the mayor to go further and persuade the Board of Education to reverse its decision to drop Columbus Day.
“I’d like to see it at the school level, too, because with the direction we’re going, should we start throwing out history books? History books are filled with this same exact thing all around the world,” Napolitano said.
The greater Chicago area, home to 65,000 Native Americans representing more than 140 tribal nations, holds the third-largest Indigenous population in the United States, according to the American Indian Center of Chicago.
Of CPS’ 355,000 students, almost 11,000 identify as Native American/ Alaskan, according to CPS figures.