The decision of the Select Board to rename the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day is overdue, but welcome. The change had the support of a majority at May Town Meeting, as well as the School Committee and Arm in Arm, as noted in the story on this page. A bill to make the change statewide (H.3191) is stuck in the Legislature, but meanwhile, as of 2021, more than two dozen towns had elected to replace Columbus Day, the present name of the federal and state holiday, with a name that recognizes our nation’s first people.
Columbus, bold navigator that he was, never set foot on the North American continent in 1492, but we now know that Vikings from Greenland did, exploring the coast of Newfoundland and establishing at least one settlement there nearly 500 years earlier, before abandoning it, perhaps in the face of native opposition, according to Icelandic sagas.
Indigenous Peoples Day will be an opportunity to learn more about those who were the first to set foot on the continent, peopling it coast to coast, preceding the Europeans who settled New England by tens of thousands of years.
In November, at Thanksgiving, we pause to remember the settlers who moved to Massachusetts in the early 1600s, but in that story Native Americans are supporting actors, celebrated for contributing to the newcomers’ success, but overlooking their own way of life and what they sacrificed. Indigenous Peoples Day will be an opportunity for both a celebration and our education.
