Is it Indigenous Peoples’ Day or Columbus Day?
That question—depending on who you’re talking to—will either prompt an explanation or a political debate. The answer to the question might also depend on where you live: as of 2024, 29 states and Washington, D.C. have officially ditched “Columbus Day” for another name (mostly Indigenous Peoples’ Day) according to renamecolumbusday.org. The change in how we remember the colonial period affects our historical memory about ourselves as a nation and as a collective people. Highlighting and venerating Christopher Columbus has been a consistent part of our national narrative; typically, American history textbooks for our K-12 students begins with Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492. We even made a rhyme so kids would remember it! We know objectively that there were people, cities, civilizations in the lands we now call America, but why don’t we include them in our national story?
The answer lies in what historical interpretation gives us. The history department at North Carolina State University (NC State) defines historical interpretation as “the process by which we describe, analyze, evaluate, and create an explanation of past events.” For me, the key word in this definition is create. We create explanation of the past using, of course, both primary (writings, artifacts, etc from the time period) and secondary (after-the-fact writings and examinations) sources but we also create these historical explanations based on the social and political context of our time.
The most accessible example to me of this creation is the proliferation of Confederate monuments in the United States. As documented in this article, white Americans in positions of power proliferated Confederate monuments along with buildings and institutions named after Confederates in time periods that were decades after the Civil War (most Confederate statues were erected in the early 1900s) and typically in reaction to Black Americans gaining social and political rights. For example, the naming of schools and colleges named after Confederates mainly occurred following the landmark Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision that help rid the nation of segregated schooling. That’s no accident. In this example, historical interpretation of these Confederate traitors as heroic warriors of a “brother-against-brother” conflict was done in an attempt to reaffirm a social order driven by white supremacy.
Following George Floyd’s murder and subsequent racial reckoning that our country experienced is at an interesting junction. In the early years of the 2020s, people of every persuasion were questioning the racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic attributes of our historical memory. Statues of Confederates, colonialists, and other historical figures examined in a more critical light came down. Streets were renamed. The names of federal holidays were debated. The role of policing in communities of color came under scrutiny, both by the everyday American and their government entities. In those moments, we were engaging in historical interpretation. If it were an eye exam, America examined historical events and people differently because we were using different lenses. Instead of looking at Christopher Columbus as an adventurous explorer who encountered a new world in peace, we looked at his actions toward the native inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere as destructive and genocidal. Whether recognized or not, the way we engaged with history as a teacher of hard lessons was changing how we viewed our role in everyday life. White folks read How to be an Antiracist at a breakneck pace. That historic interpretation work, however, was not met without resistance. The political right began to lead the backlash to this historic interpretation that related to our American identity, led by then-President Trump. At a Michigan rally as he was running for re-election, Trump’s response to changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day was an example of how “the radical left is eradicating our history” (emphasis mine). People in power know the impact that historic interpretation can have on a person, community, and nation and they will fight for the interpretation that benefits them the most.
Many of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts that began in 2020 and 2021 have been successfully vilified by the political right, and many in the center-to-left politically have lost their drive to push for more DEI initiatives in their places of work and study. The 2024 Presidential election will determine a good deal about America’s future, but the momentum to reexamine the past is on the line. Will the reexamination of American history, with an eye toward improving our current conditions by learning from the past no matter how uncomfortable that makes folks, continue? Or will we just remember the “great” stuff?
