Indigenous Peoples Day should be a national holiday

The National Congress of American Indians has the right idea. In 2011, the group passed a formal resolution advocating that the second Monday of October be renamed Indigenous Peoples Day.

The movement toward formally changing the name from Columbus Day to honoring the original inhabitants of the New World is gaining momentum across the United States. Eventually, the national holiday change will take place. As Indian Country Today reported, “In 2018 alone, 46 cities adopted the name in lieu of Columbus Day.”

A federal holiday, of course, does not make up for loss of land, lives and culture suffered by indigenous people in North, Central and South America. The clash of cultures across the Americas was bloody, leaving deep scars that remain today. In New Mexico, we know well the lasting injuries, wounds that still must be healed as the descendants of the settlers and the original inhabitants continue their lives side by side.

A holiday, though, does bring attention to the real history of the United States, placing the Native perspective front and center. This is important if the nation is to deal with its original sin of genocide of Native peoples; that some Indians remain is not because the different European groups, whether English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish, did not do their best to remove them.

That removal didn’t always occur because of massacres or battles. The Europeans brought diseases that took whole Native villages and populations. They took slaves, killed the men and raped the women. They worked to assimilate Natives, assuming their culture of Christianity and capitalism was superior.

In New Mexico, it took the successful 1680 Pueblo Revolt — forcing the colonials into exile — to bring the Pueblo people a greater role in self-determination than in many other areas. Our diversity depends on a strong Native presence, with people determined to preserve their religion, language and traditional ways. Today, we are still working out the details of this shared history — and we know that the conversations ahead will be difficult. But these are necessary discussions to confront the wrongs of the past.

For now, it is unlikely that a Trump administration would favor changing the Columbus Day holiday. In fact, the proclamation from the White House marking Columbus Day had this to say: “Today, we commemorate this great explorer, whose courage, skill, and drive for discovery are at the core of the American spirit. The bold legacy of Columbus and his crew spun a thread that weaves through the extensive history of Americans who have pushed the boundaries of exploration.”

The legacy of exploration, sadly, is accompanied by one of death and destruction. Attitudes are changing, too, with a report from Newsweek last week stating that 79 percent of college students prefer Indigenous Peoples Day to Columbus Day.

By declaring a federal holiday to honor Native people, this country will make steps toward dealing with the past in a way that will improve the future. Right now in New Mexico, though, it is Indigenous Peoples’ Day — and starting at 10 a.m. on the Santa Fe Plaza until 4:30 p.m., there will be opportunities to see dancing, poetry reading, story telling and singing.

We have to brag, too. From 3 to 3:15 p.m., the featured performer is Ricardo Caté of Kewa Pueblo, who draws the popular Without Reservations comic strip that runs six days a week in The New Mexican. He’s one funny guy. Native culture is alive and with us today, despite centuries of wrongheaded efforts to eradicate it. That is worth celebrating and it should be, all throughout the United States.