Cheers and applause followed Aquinnah voters’ 57-3 vote to officially replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day during its special town meeting on Wednesday, April 26.
The special town meeting took place at Aquinnah Town Hall, and was packed with residents ready with electronic voting machines.
Replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day was unanimously endorsed by the Aquinnah select board in 2021. The symbolic approval made Aquinnah, current home base of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the first Island town to officially endorse the holiday. The inaugural Indigenous’ Peoples’ Day celebration on Martha’s Vineyard also took place the same year. And last June, Martha’s Vineyard schools decided to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Select board chair Juli Vanderhoop, who is also a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe, told The Times she was really happy to see the change implemented, but was “very surprised” by the nay votes.
“We need to do justice for the peoples in the entire country, and bring recognition to those who really haven’t received it,” she said. “Bringing it to the town was an amazing thing.”
While she said the holiday change is a positive step, Vanderhoop said the town needs to go even farther. Recognition of indigenous people needs to happen in “our territorial lands all over New England,” according to Vanderhoop.
While President Joe Biden did declare Oct. 10 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Columbus Day is still recognized as a state and federal holiday.
Two more celebrations were added as town holidays in the same personnel bylaw amendment. One was Cranberry Day, an ancient tradition for the tribe. The town will celebrate Cranberry Day on the second Tuesday of October. And Juneteenth will be celebrated on June 19. A commemoration of the ending of slavery, Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.
Glad to hear it, should be changed everywhere! Celebrating a genocidal psychopath isn’t a good look for anyone.
Neither is busing out from your city the very people directly related to that history of Columbus and the Americas like you did last year. Talk about you jingoistic psychopaths talking about others without knowing yourselves first.
Still calling it Columbus Day, don’t care that you try to change it.
That’s good, glad when people show their true colors. Beats those that hide in the shadows.
James– you are free to call it whatever you want.
But sometimes, as we know, things change.
When president William Henry Harrison conjured up Columbus day in 1892, he was motivated by anti Italian sentiments that culminated with the lynching of 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891. He wanted to give the Italians some credibility. He could not have cared less about the atrocities and outright genocide perpetrated by Columbus and his henchmen.
It worked. We don’t have many lynchings of Italians these days.
Perhaps changing it to Indigenous peoples day might result in less oppression to indigenous peoples. Don’t cha think ?
And you know, over the course of history, other holidays have had some name changes.
Like the month long celebration of Saturnalia, starting on Dec 21. or in Germany the honoring of the god Oden celebrated around the time of the winter solstice.
And specifically on Dec 25th there was Sol invictus day. ( unconquered sun)
That was a much more appropriate name than christmas, especially given that it was very unlikely that Jesus was actually born on that day.
But call it what you will. All of us “woke” people will understand.
I will call it Indigenous peoples day.
Kudos to the people of Aquinnah.
Or perhaps you would rather not acknowledge the name change from Gay head to Aquinnah that occurred in 1998 ?
You are free to do that also.
And, by the way, happy arbor day.
If it’s no longer Columbus Day then it isn’t considered a Federal holiday so I’m assuming all the government workers will show up for work that day.
It is Indigenous People’s Day.
The day the music died.
The vast majority of government workers do not work for Federal government.
Grippers just gotta gripe.
Expert historians have been able to uncover the truth that Columbus was an extremely violent and brutal slave trader. Why would anyone want to honor someone like that! I suppose that the people who continue to support Columbus must also support the sex slave trafficking of adults and minors and, they must also support modern day slavery that still exists today. You can’t support someone who did that sort of thing in the old days and not support someone who is doing is now, Right?
“Columbus has mounting problems because the riches that he thought he would find in the lands of Asia, where he was hoping to go, were non-materializing. And in the meantime, the costs of sending more fleets to the New World were mounting. And so he decided that one good way to pay for these costs was by sending some Indians back to the slave markets of the Mediterranean, in this case in particular, to Spain. And they selected, out of close to a thousand Native Americans, the best ones, crammed them into these ships and shipped them back to the Old World.”
I suggest that Columbus supporters read this article:
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/20/565410514/an-american-secret-the-untold-story-of-native-american-enslavement
History is funny thing and you cannot put today’s morality or today’s actions on what went on hundreds of years ago. They are different times and they are taken out of context when we try and do that. Not defending anyone here, but keep in mind, the Indians were not living here in peace. They fought with each other and killed each other as much as different groups do everywhere. I celebrate Columbus, the pilgrims, and all the others that came here, and made this one of the best countries in the world. You can call this holiday Whatever you want as most people do not know the meaning behind many of the holidays they just know they get a paid day off.
You do realize that tribes conquered other tribes, enslaved their people and stole their land right? Or did they not teach you that in school?