…from Axios….
- “It’s about celebrating people instead of thinking about somebody who actually caused genocide on a population or tried to cause the genocide of an entire population,” Baley Champagne, tribal citizen of the United Houma Nation, toldNPR.
- “While Columbus Day affirms the story of a nation created by Europeans for Europeans, Indigenous Peoples Day emphasizes Native histories and Native people — an important addition to the country’s ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be American,” writes historian Malinda Maynor Lowery.
- The other side: “By renaming the holiday Indigenous People’s Day, they have decided to emphasize the sorrier aspects of Western colonization and conquest of the Americas rather than its virtues,” writes Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen….
I would have less trouble if they used everyday English and just called it Native Peoples’ Day.
If you stopped 20 random people on the street, how many of them could understand and define “indigenous” without consulting their dictionaries, cell phone screens or the Wiktionary ?
On the other hand the idea of a Native People’s Day would be clear to most people (whether or not they’d prefer calling it Columbus Day).
I suspect that there’s some P.C. at work here, fearing that Native is somehow pejorative. But when it was considered insulting 40 years ago to refer to Indians or American Indians, that’s now often the way Native Americans describe themselves.
I doubt that the 2020 or 2030 Census will ask ordinary people if they belong to an Indigenous People.
In Canada, the preferred term is First Nations (i.e. before British Canada and French Canada), which is a pretty simple, understandable and straightforward name, but one that would just draw a blank stare from Anglophones in the U.S.