The second Monday of October is recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, also referred to as Columbus Day.

Columbus Day is considered a federal holiday in the U.S., but the intentions of the holiday are controversial. Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an alternative name to Columbus Day as a way to emphasizes the importance, remembrance, and gratitude towards Native Americans.

In many American schools and history classes, Christopher Columbus is portrayed as the hero who “discovered” America. However, it’s historically inaccurate to give this title to Columbus. But most importantly, the title contributes to the erasure of Native Americans who inhabited the land long before Columbus arrived.

Columbus’s arrival to the “New World” was neither peaceful nor mutual between Natives and settlers (contrary to what you may have learned in elementary school). Columbus enslaved, murdered, and exploited the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. By celebrating Christopher Columbus, we are inherently celebrating a colonizer who committed genocide against Indigenous groups, as well as disregarding the history, culture, and life of the Americas’ Indigenous peoples.

The aftermath of Columbus’s colonization continues to affect Indigenous peoples across the nation. The racism, bigotry, and discrimination that Native Americans face in our society is rooted in the colonization and genocide initiated by Columbus—history we should no longer ignore.

According to the Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University, 1 in 3 Native Americans live in poverty—the highest level of poverty of any racial group. Native Americans have a lower life expectancy by 5.5 years compared to other racial groups. This includes higher rates of death from suicide, diabetes, chronic illnesses, and liver disease. Indigenous women are 10 times more likely to be murdered or missing than all other ethnicities, and are 4 times more likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts. Discrimination towards Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada is real and fatal.

In 2021, President Biden was the first president to officially recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day; however, the fight for this day’s acknowledgement isn’t anything new.

In 1989, Columbus Day was officially replaced with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in South Dakota. Since then, 100 other cities and over a dozen states have followed South Dakota’s steps. This act allows for racial reckoning and serves as a reminder that Native peoples deserve justice and respect.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a way to honor the culture and resilience of Native Americans and to remember that they were here first.

Indigenous culture–not Columbus’s “discovery”–is America’s foundation.