Campaign Action
On the second Monday of every October, some continue to celebrate what is known as Columbus Day. It’s, technically, a federal holiday that honors Christopher Columbus for allegedly discovering the Americas. As we all know, Columbus didn’t “discover” “America.” What he did do, however, is ignite a literal genocide, as well as encourage the rape and abuse of women, steal from, and essentially enslave Native American inhabitants of the land that is now (in part) the United States. Mind you, Native American people only continued to experience horrible treatment because of colonialism, with abuses and exploitations continuing until, frankly, today.
As first reported by Jenni Fink at Newsweek, College Pulse, a data and survey analytics company, released a new poll on how college students feel about Columbus Day. The good news? The youth agree: Columbus Day has got to go.
Before we get into the finer numbers of the survey, let’s review what parts of the country have already stopped honoring Columbus and started centering Native American communities.
Some cities, including Berkley, Seattle, Minneapolis, and even Columbus, Ohio, have already stopped observing Columbus Day. Some have officially transitioned to Indigenous Peoples Day, while others, like Columbus, simply aren’t celebrating Columbus. (The city of Columbus said it would put its efforts into celebrating Veteran’s Day more thoroughly instead).
Entire states have made the change, including Vermont, Minnesota, Alaska, Nevada, and most recently, New Mexico.
Disappointingly, some cities, including Baltimore, have actively voted not to make the change. While many cities have canceled Columbus Day parades (or at least changed them to parades honoring Indigenous people instead), some cities are holding onto “tradition,” in spite of understandable protest.
Whether or not you have time off from work or school on Columbus Day depends on where you live. Post offices are closed, along with most (but not all) federal and state offices. Some school systems stay open.
As reported by Newsweek, 1,500 college students were polled on whether or not they want to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day. Only 21% opposed the change, with a mere 9% strongly opposing it. This means that the rest of the students polled either support or strongly support it. And 79% of students support the change, and an impressive 34% strongly support it. Nice.
In terms of political affiliation, 88% of students who identified themselves as Democrats supported (or strongly supported) the change. Only 22% of students who identified themselves as Republicans supported the transition. In terms of sex, the majority of both men and women supported the switch.
For methodology, College Pulse says that it uses 250,000 undergraduates from more than 800 four-year colleges (both public and private) across 50 states. The surveys are emailed to students within the system and are designed to be completed on a computer or smartphone.
You can learn more about how to be a good ally to Native American communities by checking out our exclusive interview with Prairie Rose Seminole below or reading our write-up of the interview here.