October 15, 2019

The International Action Center is in firm solidarity with Indigenous peoples in the struggle to abolish the current “Columbus Day” as a national U.S. holiday and to rename and transform it into “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Organizing by Indigenous peoples, who steadfastly refuse to mark genocide as a holiday, has already resulted in six states and 130 cities and towns making the progressive change in the U.S.

Indigenous peoples have waged centuries of struggle to survive and advance against the death-dealing tide of settler-colonialism in the U.S. The move to rename the holiday is an attempt to correct official history as told by invaders and colonizers.

The 1492 “voyage of discovery” by Columbus, which every U.S. school child is taught, was in fact a voyage of conquest by Christian Europeans. That conquest was officially blessed by the highest religious authority. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull giving the spiritual, political and legal justification for seizing any land not inhabited by Christians. The fact that there were Indigenous peoples living on that land was known by the authors of this document, deliberately crafted to justify colonization.

The “new world” of European conquest was established on the basis of genocide, land theft and brutal injustice to Indigenous peoples. And eventually, all over the U.S., statues went up to honor the symbolic initiator of this bloodshed.

Though some may argue naively, or with deliberate racism, that Columbus Day merely honors Italian cultural heritage, progressive people of Italian descent have been making it clear that they unite in solidarity with Indigenous peoples to fight white supremacy.

Sharp historical memory underlines this support because 19th and early 20th century Italians who immigrated to the U.S. faced virulent racism. This racism was especially aimed at those from southern Italy and Sicily linked to African lineage. In fact, in 1891, eleven Italian men were openly lynched in New Orleans.

But in 1892, when U.S. President Benjamin Harrison called for the U.S. to mark Oct. 12 as the “discovery of America by Columbus” in part because of “the divine care and guidance which has directed our history,” he was not taking a stand against xenophobia, white supremacy or colonization.  (Common Dreams, Oct. 11)

Instead, that call was the sign of a new deal emerging in the U.S. and offered to “ethnic immigrants” — who might be Irish or Slavic or Italian or other groups vilified as of color.

The deal? Accept and go along with white supremacy and become “white” — or face the genocide, violence and discrimination visited on peoples who were Indigenous or of African descent.

But millions of people have said NO to that deal — choosing instead to organize and struggle against racism.

This coming year, until Oct. 12, 2020, gives another chance for progressive people to say “No to white supremacy! Down with statues of Columbus or any memorial to racism and colonization! Up with banners of Indigenous Peoples’ Day!”