L.A. replaces Columbus Day
LOS ANGELES » The City Council has voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day as an official Los Angeles holiday.
Councilmembers voted 14-1 to make the second Monday in October a day to commemorate indigenous, aboriginal and native people. It will be a paid holiday for city employees.
Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, a member of the Wyandotte Nation tribe, pushed for the switch. Some activists view Christopher Columbus as a symbol of genocide for native peoples.
Councilman Joe Buscaino was the lone “no” vote on Wednesday. He sided with Italian-Americans, who view Columbus Day as a celebration of their national heritage.
Los Angeles joins San Francisco, Seattle, Albuquerque and Denver and several other cities nationwide in honoring native Americans in lieu of Columbus.
The fight over Columbus statue comes amid a national debate over honors to historic figures some see as unworthy. Monuments of Confederate leaders around the country have come under fire as racially insensitive and an inspiration to white supremacists.
Columbus monuments too have come under fire. A San Jose group is petitioning to remove the Christopher Columbus statue donated to the city in 1958 by the Italian-American community from City Hall. A Columbus statue in Houston was defaced this summer. Organizers are demanding a statue be taken down in downtown Columbus, Ohio, and a Columbus monument in Baltimore was smashed recently.
Columbus, an Italian explorer who had set out from Spain in the late 15th Century to establish a western trade route to Asia, has been celebrated as the first European explorer to introduce Europe to the Americas. Columbus Day was es- tablished as a federal holiday in 1937. But Columbus has drawn criticism for his subsequent harsh treatment and enslavement of indigenous people.
As in other places where honors for Columbus have come into question, the debate in Los Angeles pitted supporters of indigenous people against Italian-Americans who see the explorer as inspiring.
“On behalf of the Italian community, we want to celebrate with you,” said Ann Po- tenza, president of Federated Italo-Americans of Southern California, speaking in a room packed with Native American activists. “We just don’t want it to be at the expense of Columbus Day.”
That idea was unacceptable to Chrissie Castro, vice chairwoman of the Los Angeles City- County Native American Indian Commission. She argued that city lawmakers needed to “dismantle a state- sponsored celebration of genocide of indigenous peoples.”