Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Rethinking American History [Smithsonian]

“The most American thing about America is American Indians.” —Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche)

The first documented observance of Columbus Day in the United States took place in New York City in 1792, on the 300th anniversary of Columbus’s landfall in the Western Hemisphere. The holiday originated as an annual celebration of Italian–American heritage in San Francisco in 1869. In 1934, at the request of the Knights of Columbus and New York City’s Italian community, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared the first national observance of Columbus Day. President Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress made October 12 a national holiday in 1937. In 1972 President Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making the official date of the holiday the second Monday in October.

In the forefront of the minds of many Native people throughout the Western Hemisphere, however, is the fact the colonial takeovers of the Americas, starting with Columbus, led to the deaths of millions of Native people and the 

Read more of this article by Dennis W. Zotigh and Renee Gokey please click here.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2018/10/08/indigenous-peoples-day-2018/#1e2YHGPOCCKyVXGC.99