Goodbye, Columbus?: Arizona celebrates first Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Native Americans in Arizona finally celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day as an official state holiday Monday – but it was a win with an asterisk.
After years of advocacy by tribal groups, Gov. Doug Ducey last month signed
a proclamation
making October 12, 2020, a joint celebration of both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day, but just for this year.
“I’ve been working on this for years now and so when the governor signed the proclamation, … we were all taken aback,” said state Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, D-Cameron, who first introduced a bill to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2013.
“And so we’re surprised and we’re very thankful,” she said, calling it a “step towards making it an official state forever holiday.”


If Peshlakai is successful, Arizona will join at least 13 states and the District of Columbia that celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of or alongside Columbus Day. South Dakota started the movement when it began celebrating Native American Heritage Day in 1990, but most states made the change over the last decade. In many states, local governments led the way: Phoenix adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2016 and Flagstaff in 2018. “Thank goodness for small towns and mayors and city councils … in various off-reservation sites and communities that have renamed Columbus Day, or have proclaimed Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Peshlakai said.
A federal bill to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day was introduced last October by Rep. Norma Torres, D-California, but failed to get a hearing. Torres last week introduced a measure calling for Indigenous Peoples’ Day to replace Columbus Day. Peshlakai said the move is overdue. “There are over 500 tribes in the U.S. but we have no one holiday to call our own,” she said. “Every square inch of the United States is indigenous lands and people choose to ignore it and it’s easy to ignore it because it’s not taught.” For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.“Long before the United States came to be, tribes and indigenous people lived and thrived here”: A bipartisan Congressional resolution calls for the official designation of the second Monday of October as a federal holiday. #IndigenousPeoplesDay https://t.co/Ej9gcimOjX
— indianz.com (@indianz) October 12, 2020
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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