Columbus Day is being recognized today across the United States. But as Governing magazine reports, in more than 50 U.S. cities—along with a few universities, counties and states—it’s not. Instead, those places are celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day.
Rather than commemorating explorer Christopher Columbus, the new holiday focuses on the lives of the people he and other European explorers encountered in the New World.
Columbus Day marks the landing of the Italian-born explorer in the Caribbean in 1492. President Franklin Roosevelt created the first federal observance of Columbus Day in 1937, and President Richard Nixon established the federal holiday in 1972.
But historians in recent years have reassessed Columbus and the general depiction of him as a heroic figure. Proponents of Indigenous Peoples Day say Columbus and his crew were responsible for rapes, murders and the plunder of the Caribbean islands where they landed. They also say Columbus didn’t “discover” the New World because there were already people living on the islands where he landed.
