Brown University Faculty Votes to Rename Columbus Day “Indigenous People’s Day”

The faculty at Brown University has voted to abolish Columbus Day and rename it "Indigenous People's Day":

The name change, which becomes effective this fall, came at the behest of the student group Native Americans at Brown, according to the Brown Daily Herald:

NAB and other students rallied outside Salomon Center before the meeting took place, holding signs reading “250+ years of occupying indigenous land,” “Native Americans discovered Columbus,” “We don’t celebrate genocide” and “#Changethename.”

The vote was in response to a petition signed by over 1,100 faculty members, staff, alums and students urging the University to recognize indigenous peoples on the day formally celebrating the oppression instigated by Christopher Columbus, said Thomas Roberts, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Actually, the Brown faculty had already dumped Christopher Columbus some seven years ago:

A 2009 “student-led movement” by NAB previously requested that the name Columbus Day be changed to Indigenous People’s Day because the “holiday was insulting and potentially misleading in many ways,” said Linford Fisher, associate professor of history. But instead of changing the name to Indigenous People’s Day, faculty members voted to change the name of the holiday to a “neutral term,” Fall Weekend, in order to avoid offending the Italian-American population for whom the holiday was originally dedicated, Fisher said.

Indigenous and Native American students felt that the neutral name of Fall Weekend swept the “terrible acts of genocide that (Columbus) directly took part in” under the rug, said Elizabeth Hoover, associate professor of American studies who identifies as Native American and worked with NAB during the campaign. “It doesn’t pay homage to the people that were here, and it just ignores that history,” she added.

"Fall Weekend," of course, put Columbus Day (Oct. 12, although to be celebrated this year on Oct. 10 as the second Monday in October) into the same category as Christmas vacation (now "Winter Vacation") and Easter break (now "Spring Break"). But that, apparently wasn't good enough for the Brown activists:

“The change from the neutral name of Fall Weekend recognizes both the role and the plight of Native Americans currently and historically,” Roberts said, adding it will hopefully “go some way towards addressing the hurt students feel when they see a holiday named after Columbus.”

And we can't have the delicate little darlings feeling "hurt" by a name like "Fall Weekend."

Christopher Columbus might have sailed the ocean blue, but in recent years he's been sailing right into Davy Jones' locker. In 1990 the state of South Dakota abolished Columbus Day–just in time to un-celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Genoese navigator's discovery of America (now known as "encounter with advanced civilizations") in 1992. According to an Oct. 12, 2015 report in Indian Country Today:

In 2014, the cities of Seattle and Minneapolis successfully abolished Columbus Day, replacing it with Indigenous Peoples Day. And recently, eight more cities have successfully made the change, too: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Lawrence, Kansas; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; Bexar County, Texas; Anadarko, Okalahoma; Olympia, Washington; and Alpena, Michigan.

What, no Berkeley, California?

Great rejoicing ensued at Indian Country Today:

Deceptive. Greedy. Murderer. Racist. Not exactly characteristics of a hero, and certainly not the makings of a man worthy of a national holiday. 

Jig’s up, America. Christopher Columbus was a genocidal madman. America’s first and original terrorist.

Also, Columbus smoked indoors and wore white shoes after Labor Day.

Those anti-Columbus activists might be interested to know that a huge number of their brethren–American Latinos who invariably have some Indian blood–haven't gotten the word that the man who put their lands on the map was actually a genocidal maniac. The annual Hispanic Columbus Day Parade in New York City is the most important ethnic celebration of the year for the millions of Latinos who live around New York.

And it's interesting to note that the state of Rhode Island, home of Brown, is 19 percent Italian. But on Ivy League campuses, who cares about the feelings of the townies?