Columbus Day in Minneapolis may soon be
celebrated as Indigenous Peoples Day if a coalition of advocates,
city leaders and organizations can convince a majority of the
13-member Minneapolis City Council to approve the change.
The effort is a result of recent
organizing by the Native American Community Development Institute
along with Minneapolis City Councilwoman Alondra Cano (Ward 9) and her policy aide and community member Ashley Fairbanks. The roots of the name change began at NACDI’s first
mayoral candidate forum held in November of last year.
“Last fall when we did our first
mayoral forum – which is kind of a historic moment, too – one of
the first times we had the candidates come down in our community and
talk about our issues on our own terms. And we had community members
ask questions of the mayoral candidates and one of them was ‘Are you
willing to un-recognize Columbus Day?’ and so at that time, a
majority of candidates said yes and one of them was Betsy Hodges who
was elected and is now our current mayor,” NACDI President and CEO
Jay Bad Heart Bull said. “And so everything aligned with our
community work and civic engagement and then the big shift in the
city council now with much more younger, progressive representation.
And then also leadership by Alondra’s office to really push this
through.”
More Than A Name Change
“It’s high time that we at least
make this effort to rally the community and show the city population
that we’re still here, we’re still vibrant, we’re still contributing
to make this a better city and a better state over all. The only way
we can do that is by recognizing and calling out things when they’re
wrong,” Bad Heart Bull said. “We’re starting with a deficit with
Columbus Day and we have to get to the point where we have an even
playing field before we can start making bigger moves, too. It’s one
of those things – and we don’t like the term ‘low-hanging fruit’ –
but it’s a name change but there’s so much significance with just
that name change for us.”
Cano shared his views on how a name
can impact more than a date on the calendar. She sees a more in-depth
problem that needs addressing.
“Whenever we talk to folks about it,
there’s a different recognition that Columbus does not signify
everything that’s all good and positive for all communities. So
there’s definitely a sentiment there of reclaiming that story,
telling a more complex story and uplifting some of the other factors
that happened when that era of time took place and displaced
community members from their lands and stole their cultural
knowledge, their historical knowledge passed down from ancestors,”
Cano said.
“From my perspective, as a Mexican
woman, as a Chicana activist, I see this as a very important issue
because it does matter how we name things, it does matter how we
remember history. It does matter because it shapes our decisions
today and what we want to do in the future. In being able to honor
our youth and being able to honor our families in a way that
recognizes being cultural assets and all of the contributions that we
have been giving to this country for centuries immemorial is
definitely a space we need to reclaim in the policy conversation.
It’s connected to the budget in how resources are allocated. It
shapes our contemporary opportunities and options to advance
ourselves.”
NACDI leaders and Native activists
also look at this name change as an opportunity to engage members of
the urban Indian population. “For so long, everybody just takes off
Columbus Day and people just take a day off work. But for us what we
really need to do is mobilize the community. We have a day off of
work, we have a day that we can actually start doing some community
work, organize and engage with one another. Use it and leverage that
day or the day leading up to with politicians and elected officials
to push on state-level recognition as well,” Bad Heart Bull said.
So far, the process has been a moving
one for NACDI’s organizing director Daniel Yang. “This arose from
the community, it was carried on by leaders that NACDI works with and
NACDI’s relationship, especially with our Make Voting a Tradition
campaign and having the mayoral candidate making sure that community
members asked what they were concerned about. It’s kind of this
pipeline on how an engaged citizenry can really build things and move
power.”
Push Back
Although organizers are energized for
this effort to recognize the community’s contributions to the city’s
cultural landscape, Cano said that at least two city council
representatives have expressed some concern over what this would
signify in terms of logistics for the city’s union contracts.
However, she has been making the case that last year’s campaign
rhetoric regarding a One Minneapolis requires a change in attitude.
“I want to be respective of letting
people think about that for a minute and then also being forthright
about leading with the right vision and the right theme of inclusion
for a true One Minneapolis. We’ve all talked about One Minneapolis,
then this is a part of that One Minneapolis, it’s really about equity
and about acknowledging our indigenous history and our indigenous
values as a country that was founded on Native American land.”
She also added that empathy for Native
issues would be needed to bring about positive change in the Native
community. “I think it’s just a matter of thinking about this from
the Native American perspective for once. I think a lot of people are
used to thinking from a mainstream paradigm but we’re asking people
to put themselves in somebody else’s shoes for a minute, think about
how this history has played out, think about how this has been
written about in the books and will you join us in this journey to
really elevate and support a more positive and constructive and
inclusive way of telling history and engaging in community.”
Beyond Native
Another sign of a congenial relations
that have been fostered within minority communities also includes the
name change itself. As opposed to a Native American or American
Indian Day, as is recognized in South Dakota, the organizers seek to
broaden what it means to be indigenous.
“The reasoning behind Indigenous
Peoples Day is that one of the things we’ve learned in our work is
that when you just say Native American or American Indian, you’re
really limiting your audience and who identifies as those things. But
when you say Indigenous, that really opens up the doors to millions
of other indigenous people across the world that we can stand in
solidarity with,” Bad Heart Bull said.
“We’ve all gone through the same
sort of struggle, just at different times and ways. I think that we
were intentional about calling it indigenous so that we could work
with communities that still identify as indigenous like a lot of our
Latino allies out there who come from indigenous cultures. Bringing
that and how can we work together to really start building bridges
amongst our cultures, because we all have so many beautiful things
that we can bring to the table. We’re stronger when we work together,
that’s the reasoning behind calling it Indigenous Peoples Day,” Bad
Heart Bull added.
Showing Up and Giving Thanks
The resolution for Indigenous Peoples
Day is tentatively slated for a Minneapolis council vote on April 25.
If passed, it will mark the theme for the kick off to the Minnesota
American Indian month on May 1 at Cedar Field at the Little Earth of
United Tribes complex on Cedar Avenue and 24th Street.
Yang added that he hopes this will be an opportunity for the
Minneapolis Native community as well as other communities of color to
show up at the council meeting and show their solidarity when the
council takes the vote.
Both he and Bad Heart Bull remain
circumspect when it comes to the scope of work that’s made this shift
possible. “NACDI was the catalyst in working with the community,
but it builds on decades of work from other organizations, groups and
thousands of activists that have worked to push this, so by no means
are we just capitalizing on the grassroots work that’s been done …
It’s the Bellecourts, the grandmas, the youth groups, Little Red
Schoolhouse, Heart of the Earth. We’re just lucky stand on the
shoulders of all of these great leaders, activists and advocates in
our community. We feel like we would be doing a disservice if we
didn’t try to push even further and build on top of that foundation
that the laid for us young folk.”
For more information on the
Minneapolis city council vote on Indigenous Peoples Day and the
American Indian Month Kick-Off event, visit www.nacdi.org .