October 12-13, 2024: Contested Holidays: Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day

[Ahead ofColumbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I wanted to dedicate a series to exploringsuch contested American holidays and what they can help us think about. Leadingup to this special post on that most conflicted of all our federal holidays!]

On one waymy thinking has significantly evolved in the last decade, and one thing I’dstill emphasize.

In all butone of the posts this week I started by asking you to check out a prior pieceof mine, and so it’s only fitting that in this weekend post I do the same. Backin October 2015 I wrote for myTalking Points Memo column about how we might reinvent Columbus Day, and I’dask you to check out that column if you would and then come on back here for acouple layers to where my thinking is nine years (!) after I wrote that.

Welcomeback! 2015 was right at the start of themovement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and nineyears later I have to admit I am thoroughly convinced that such a move (whichhas officially taken place in anumber of communities) is the right one. As I hope has been clear throughoutthe week, and hell throughout this blog’s nearly 14 years, I believe we can andmust remember as much of our history as possible. But commemoration is a verydifferent thing (as MichaelKammen knew well), and given the countless impressive and inspiringAmericans on whom a collective holiday might focus, I just can’t justifydedicating one of them to someone who never set foot on the continent and whowas apretty thoroughly despicable dude to boot (getting to talk Columbus Day forJunior Scholastic magazine remains a career highlight). In the TPMcolumn I noted the turn of the 20th century reasonswhy Columbus Day became a thing (make sure to check out that great GuestPost on th subject from my friend Nancy Caronia), and those are certainly stillworth remembering as well; but a holiday commemorating Columbus is, to my 2024mind, a no-go.

Anotherpart of my proposed solution back in 2015 was to add commemorations of a pair ofother Spanish arrivals to the Americas, Bartoloméde las Casas y AlvarNuñez Cabeza de Vaca. While I’m not sure we should try to commemorate themat the same time as Indigenous Peoples Day—one collective holiday dedicatedentirely to Native American histories seems quite literally the least we coulddo—I remain dedicated to adding both of those figures to our collectivememories in any and all ways. While there are various reasons for thatcommitment, at the top of the list is that these two figures, in very distinctbut complementary ways, exemplify my conceptof cross-cultural transformation, of perspectives and identities that entirelyand inspiringly shifted when these individuals from a particular culturalbackground came into contact with other communities and cultures. Perhaps noindividual holiday could quite capture that complicated process—but perhaps onecould, because as I hope this whole series has illustrated holidays can be (andhave always been) whatever we want them to be. And if we were to commemorate transformativeAmerican stories, we couldn’t do much better than las Casas & de Vaca.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?