Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day?

Growing up in Minnesota, the only thing I learned about Columbus Day was that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Otherwise, Columbus Day wasn’t very important. As a minor footnote, we also learned that Columbus stumbled on some Caribbean islands and never set foot on the mainland of North America.

Given that it was Minnesota, we also learned that Leif Erikson had probed the shores of North America almost 500 years earlier. Nordic history describes Vikings routinely traveling to portions of North America to trade, hunt, and fish. But what we did not learn was that Polynesian navigators were able to traverse the islands of the Pacific at will, or that the great Chinese merchant fleet was sailing the waters of the Arabian and Indian Oceans in the seventh and eighth centuries.

Columbus, with limited navigational skill and rather crude sailing ships, nevertheless accomplished something worth remembering. He opened the door to a furious assault on the oceans as Europeans attempted to understand the world beyond their own parochial limitations—creating maps and recording findings that could be shared widely. He helped reveal opportunities for scientific investigation that were previously unthinkable.

I don’t think any of that was his intention; it’s just what happened as a result of his voyages. Sadly, he also opened the doorway to conquest, subjugation, enslavement, and empire-building. Whether he had any idea that such things would follow, I have no idea. It seems his primary interests were wealth, prestige, and power. It didn’t end well for him—he gained and lost it all.

With that said, I have no particular stake in celebrating Columbus Day as a national holiday. It was never celebrated where I grew up, except in name. If Italian Americans wish to celebrate it as a tribute to their heritage, by all means, let them do so.

I’m also not very keen on simply substituting Indigenous Peoples’ Day for Columbus Day. The idea is too important to be a mere replacement for something else. It deserves its own day, enacted in law—a day dedicated not to an abstraction of “indigenous peoples,” but to their particular nations, histories, cultures, and contributions to American life.

It should also be a day recognizing the injustices heaped upon them, not only during the European conquest of North America but also in the enduring legacy of that conquest—indignities and abuses that continue to this day.

Don’t be confused: this is not about chest-beating or self-condemnation for what those of European heritage have done to Native Americans. It is simply about being honest with ourselves. Reparations can never fully be made, but the future can be different if we are willing to face reality without fear.

Perhaps the best way to begin is to give Indigenous Americans a day in which their voices are heard and not ours—to let them decide how to celebrate and how the rest of us should celebrate with them. Let them be the ones who determine what the day should mean for the entire nation.