No more Columbus Days, some UNC students say. They want Indigenous Peoples Day.
A UNC student group wants the university to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative to the federal holiday that honors explorer Christopher Columbus.
Carolina Indian Circle, representing American Indian students on campus, launched an online petition asking the university to “take an active stance in supporting Indigenous Peoples Day by adding it to the University calendar on the second Monday in October,” according to a story Monday in The Daily Tar Heel.
By not commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day, the group said, UNC would “glorify Columbus and support the negative consequences that Native people have faced and continue to face.”
Columbus Day is one of 10 federal holidays, meaning a day off for most U.S. government employees.
UNC-Chapel Hill follows the state of North Carolina’s holiday schedule, which has nine holidays and doesn’t include Columbus Day. Though it’s not a state holiday, Gov. Roy Cooper has declared the second Monday in October Indigenous People’s Day since he took office in 2017.
He did so again on Monday through an executive order naming North Carolina’s eight historic tribes and saying that some have not been treated fairly, resulting in the destruction of their cultures.
North Carolina has about 122,000 American Indian residents who, Cooper’s proclamation says, “play a vital role in the development of the local communities, the state of North Carolina and the nation.”
Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz has asked the UNC Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward to explore how the university should properly recognize the role indigenous people played in the history of the university, a statement from the UNC Media Office said Monday.
The academic calendar is recommended by the Academic Calendar Committee, a group of students, faculty and staff that sets the dates for exams, commencement and breaks for each academic year. The calendar is approved by the chancellor.
Indigenous Peoples Day was first proposed in 1977 by the International Conference on Discrimination Against the Indigenous Population of the Americas, a delegation sponsored by First Nation leaders to the United Nations, Cooper said.
N.C. State University became the first UNC system school to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day in 2018.
Of nearly 30,000 students enrolled at UNC in Fall 2019, 0.4% of undergraduates in fall 2019 identified as American Indian or Alaska native, along with 0.2% of graduate students and 0.5% of professional students, according to UNC. That’s 116 students total.
UNC’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion presently names eight cultural celebrations and observances on campus: First Amendment Day; LatinX Heritage Month; American Indian Heritage Month; Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration and Commemoration; Black History Month; Women’s History Month/Gender Week; Asian Pacific American Heritage Month/Asia Week; and LGBT Pride Month.
This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 5:51 PM with the headline "No more Columbus Days, some UNC students say. They want Indigenous Peoples Day.."
