COLUMBUS DAY / INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ DAY (Read More)

Columbus Day is a federal holiday celebrated on the second Monday in October. It is, however, not a public legal holiday in some states such as Washington, California, Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii. The day commemorates October 12, 1492, when Italian navigator Christopher Columbus landed in the New World. The holiday was first proclaimed in 1937 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation designating the second Monday in October as Columbus Day.

In the State of Washington, Columbus Day is not a legal state holiday. The Seattle Human Rights Commission passed Resolution 14-3 on June 5, 2014 to recognize the second Monday of October (the federally observed Columbus Day holiday) as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Resolution 14-3 recognizes that, among other things,

• all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights;
• the United States supports the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that recognizes that “indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources”;
• the indigenous peoples of the lands that would later become known as the Americas have occupied these lands since time immemorial;
• the celebration of Christopher Columbus celebrate an era of colonization and dispossession of indigenous peoples’ homelands;
• Seattle is built upon indigenous peoples’ homelands;