Activists rally to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Italian American group doesn’t want ‘one-sided narrative.’
Chicago Tribune
Posted October 11, 2021
Over 50 people gathered in protest and celebration Monday morning on the Far North Side as politicians and activists spoke to denounce Columbus Day and lift up Indigenous Peoples Day in what some called an act of reconciliation and healing.
State Rep. Delia Ramirez, one of the speakers at the rally and a member of the Indigenous Peoples Day Coalition, announced the reintroduction of a bill that would officially change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day on the statewide level.
Ramirez said she introduced a similar bill last year and, after announcing it, was bombarded with “calls, emails, messages on Facebook and Instagram” telling her to leave Columbus Day as it is.
Maritza Garcia, of Chicago, a member of the Choctaw tribe from Mississippi, performs a jingle dance in Chicago's Potawatomi Park on Oct. 11, 2021. Garcia said the dance originated from the Ojibwa tribe and is a dance of healing. (Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)
“I know this is why we all know we have to end this time of celebrating white supremacy, trauma, racism and internalized colonization of our people. It has to end now,” Ramirez said.
The rally took place in Pottawattomie Park in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Just hours later, a caravan of Ferraris, Fiats and other Italian sports cars revved their engines downtown on State Street near the end of the route for the city’s annual Columbus Day parade, hosted by the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans.
The committee’s president, Ron Onesti, said that Columbus supporters are willing to discuss the uglier aspects of Columbus’ story as long as tributes to him aren’t wholly eliminated.
Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans President Ron Onesti speaks about his hopes for restoring a statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park after the Columbus Day parade along South State Street on Oct. 11, 2021, in Chicago. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
“We want to learn the good, the bad, the ugly truths about our own American history,” Onesti said. “But what cannot be done is to replace what is perceived to be a one-sided narrative with another one-sided narrative.”
Ramirez’s plan to move for Columbus Day to be renamed Indigenous Peoples Day at the state level is not needed, Onesti said, because Indigenous people are already honored with their own day in Illinois (the last Monday of September).
“God love them, we want (Indigenous people) to have a day,” Onesti said. “This is not about them having a day. It’s about people taking away our one day that we have to celebrate our traditions. We have one day, and one ethnic group should not stand on the shoulders of another ethnic group in order to get a day.”
Oct. 12, 1792, marked the first celebration of Columbus Day in the United States, but it did not become a federal holiday until June 1968. It had been observed by Italian Americans as a celebration of their heritage for over a century.