Starting this topic to get your help with arguments in all directions about the U.S. movement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People Day.
Would love to hear your thoughts about this issue.
I'm on a legislative body that is deciding whether to recommend changing from celebrating Columbus Day to Indigenous People Day. I care about this issue and have joined those who are trying to convince others to take Columbus out of the picture and replace him with honoring Indigenous People on the second Monday in October.
It is an interesting issue that involves another passionate group -- Italian Americans who do not want to lose their holiday. For decades, Italian Americans had suffered discrimination in this country to the point where in 1881 a lynch mob shot 11 Italian Americans in one of the largest mass lynchings in US history. So in 1937, Franklin Roosevelt established Columbus Day to honor them via Columbus.
So now in my town there are two proposed bylaws up for vote. Our body is only being asked to recommend an action. One is to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People Day and the other is to celebrate two holidays - one for Italian Americans on the former Columbus Day and one for Indigenous People in November.
End result, Democracy is messy and everyone's views must be heard and considered. Then we vote.
Local Government in my town is as true a democracy as it gets. But it is slow and painstaking and we don't always get what we want. But it works.
@jeanne-mayell I read a long time ago that Indians were suppose to have a special day in September. I see it now and then, but it doesn't seem to have a big movement.
@jeanne-mayell I read a long time ago that Indians were suppose to have a special day in September. I see it now and then, but it doesn't seem to have a big movement.
Do you mean East Indians? From India? Or Native Americans/Indigenous/First People?
Because if it's the latter, I ask with kindness that you stop using the word "Indian" (unless you refer to people from India, in which case, carry on).
This was still happening in the 80s. When my mom registered me for kindergarten my name was anglicized. Instead of my real name of Yesenia it was changed into Jessica and since I was so young I forgot my real name and everyone in my family called me Jessica. In middle school I found my birth certificate and asked my mom if she has another daughter and she said no that is you. So when I went into middle school I wanted to use my real name and again they “compromised” said I can go by Jessi. It was not into I went into high school that I finally got to use my name but by then I was just known by Jessi and still go by that name. I wasn’t the only one who they did this too.
My first name was a big scandal in my family. It was supposed to be Vincenza, after my father's mother/according to tradition. My mother (in one of the least toxic acts of her lifetime) refused and chose Laura because she knew it didn't need anglicizing, was still a name that originated in Italy, and wouldn't be shortened to something - she didn't want me to go through life being called "Vinny". She also rightfully protested because that grandmother, upon arrival at Ellis Island, got her named changed to "Lily" and hadn't gone by Vincenza except on paper. Also, by the time I was born, there were already 2 female cousins baptized Vincenza - and both go by "Vinnie Girl" in the family because we also have a ton of Vincent-Vinnys -LOL. To get me baptized, my mother told the priest I was named for St. Laurence. And then in a nod to her narcissism (well, I wasn't going to escape free and clear!), she gave me her first name as my middle name.
As adults, one of my brothers and I did legal name changes. We un-anglicized our last name, and I dropped my middle name. We've both been enjoying the change after all these years.
Reading about the treatment of Native Americans in Tulsa Oklahoma today because of Trump's rally there.
In the Washington Post today:
Tulsa’s ugly racial history: From Trail of Tears to deadly 1921 race massacre May 31
Reminding us that in 1830, The Indian Removal Act is signed by President Andrew Jackson, pushing 60,000 Native Americans, including the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, off their lands in the southeast United States. The Native Americans are forced by federal troops to walk hundreds of miles to what is now Oklahoma. Historians say more than 15,000 died of exposure, starvation and exhaustion on what is known as the Trail of Tears. -- WAPO Tulsa's ugly Racial History by
No need for ancestry.com - first of all, they mis-transcribed many of the names of my family members listed on ship manifests. Second, my family is HUGE in both countries. I sat down with my maternal grandmother in 1978 - just counting that side of the family in the US at that time we had over 600 people, and presumably my dad's side is about the same. Third, there are a lot of family members I have had to cut out of my life for various reasons, so there are many I don't keep in touch with at all. Fourth, I actually know what I can know about my geneology, and it comes down to this: we were peasants. Lumberjacks, carpenters, farmers and butchers. Everyone was rural. Births were rarely recorded in the village hall, and surprisingly, baptisms were not adequately recorded a lot of the time. So I can go back to the mid-1800s, and then it's a dead end. I had heard once, about 20 years ago, from a distant cousin who was trying to do the geneology, I warned her, and she tried too, but hit the same brick wall.
On a bright note - I recently connected online with a long lost second cousin on my dad's side (his sister is one of the "Vinnie Girls") - we were both born in NYC on the exact same day. Side note: I held my breath on social media and was SO relieved to see he shares my progressive values, so now I'm especially glad to reconnect. He's over in Phoenix - I've probably driven right by his home or office and didn't even know
Hi all. New poster, longtime lurker.
I had a thought that might have an impact on your deliberating group, Jeanne. Ask them to read “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”.
I was horrified and enthralled when I read this book at age 45, the year I started college. This was a side of American history I never learned in school. My small town USA eyes and heart were opened and my life was forever changed.
Some towns in Oklahoma, like mine has already changed Columbus Day to INDIGENOUS Day.